130. Śātodarī
Devi has a narrow waist.
A narrow waist and broad hips are the hallmark of a beautiful woman. Narrow waist indicates a supple body. According to the śastras, a waist that can be cupped in the hands is a sign of beauty. Even this small waist is pierced by a deep navel.
The waist is the place where the just born child grows to the full size. The waist expands to accommodate the growing child. The child in this case is the Universe. The deep navel represents a single attitude, a point and origin of the Universe. It also represents a space curving into itself to finally become a point. The mother Goddess gives life to and sustains the Universe growing from the seed of God in Her womb.
131. Śāntimatī
This word has two meanings,
that She has peace within Her and
that She has a peaceful mind.
Śānti means peace and mati means mind, more aptly discrimination. Quiet, discrimination, balance, and harmony are some of the most important characteristics of the Mother.
132. Nirādhārā
She has no support. She supports everything else in the world.
For the devotee who is trying to realise himself, all paths can lead only up to a certain point and no further. From then on there is no mantra, there is no tantra, there is no yantra, there is no Guru and there is no support of any kind. The devotee has to perform a spacewalk without support. While lacking support for himself, he supports all matter in his space like a womb through the flow of time.
133. Nirañjanā
Devi inherently has no coloration, no bias of any sort. What makes of this colourful universe around us? Where are these colours? The atom which emits a like quantum has no colour. What exists is a frequency. These various frequencies are interpreted as various colours by the perceiver, the human intellect. Dogs can hear the ultrasonic frequencies. Humans cannot hear it. Even if we assume that the dog perceives the sound in the same way as we do, the dog still hears new sounds and tones that we have never heard and that we are never capable of hearing. Very low frequency sounds are felt as vibrations in the body. When a drummer beats a drum the sound is heard within one's own heart as a thump. It is more a feeling than a sound. As the frequency increases from the very low frequencies to the very high frequencies, the human sensory apparatus presents this data in various formats to be perceived respectively as feelings, thoughts, heat, sound, sight and so on. So the colour is a property associated with the sensory apparatus and a phenomenon of resonance. It is not inherent in the vibration itself. Truly, the colours that we see exist in the mind of the individual rather than outside, i.e., the colours are subjective.
[For] the question — “Is there or can there be a reality outside a perceiving consciousness?” — the answer is both yes and no at the same time. If there exists such an objective reality, there would be no consciousness to perceive it and therefore there can be no relevance to such an existence. Such an existence might as well be called non-existence.
It must be realised that there can be no perception of such a nonexistence which may still exist. That could be the Mother, the source of a consciousness, which can then perceive the existence so long as it lasts. The dividing line between existence (Sat) in the oriental literature and existence cum non-existence (Asat) in the oriental literature is the consciousness which brings in and is the meaning of existence. The famous poet Kālidāsa describes the relationship between the Father and the Mother of the universe in the following stanza. The Mother is the word. The meaning of the word is the Father.
The śruti says: “Oṁ devīm vācamajanayanta devāstām viśvarūpāḥ paśavo vadanti”. This means vāk, or the sound, is the primordial combination existence/non-existence described above. Out of this, the Devi consciousness has brought meaning to existence. The people who differentiate themselves from the Devi, called paśu, describe this perceived Universe. This invocation is used as an auspicious statement at the beginning of any prayer, saying let this be an auspicious moment when Devi, a new consciousness is born into us.
134. Nirlepā
The word lepana means anointing, like anointing a perfume on one's body. Devi does not get coupled to anything. She does not anoint anything. She does not contact anything. She produces the world out of Her womb, feeds and supports this world, and destroys it and reabsorbs it into Herself. Appearing to be involved in all these actions, all this dynamism, in reality She is actionless. All actions are born as thoughts are born and all actions die as thoughts die. There is a distinction between the physical and the mental for the simple reason that there is no such thing as physical. If a physical exists, then there would be a distinction between the physical and mental. There can be no possibility of the existence of the physical entity outside a cognising consciousness. All the distinctions of the physical and the non-physical occur in the field of a triad created by the consciousness which separates itself from itself and sees the separated thought as another entity.
This triad of the seer, the seen, and the act of seeing constitutes what is called the Māyā or covering of God which makes Him into a man.
135. Nirmalā
Devi is free from all impurities.
The possibility of an impurity arises only when a pure entity is getting mixed up with another impurity, which is not pure by definition.
What is happening in the case of Devi? Pure consciousness is all the time getting mixed or separated from pure consciousness. There is no second entity. Even the so-called existence is a property of consciousness, as consciousness is the property of existence. Even though the words consciousness and existence seem to be different words, each is the meaning of the other. This is how the śastras describe the union of Śiva and Śakti as being inseparable from each other, and out of their union flows the eternal bliss called the Ānanda. Thus Sat (existence), Cit (consciousness), and Ānanda (bliss) are considered to be of the nature which defines God in the abstract form, devoid of all names and perceived forms.
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