A first look at the Lalitā Kramam: Intimacy with God

 

 (from "A Jewel From My Mother's Crown"): 

I would like to be intimate with my God. I would like to see God in front of me, not as something unknown to me, but just like I am seeing you. I want to talk to God, to that Higher Intelligence, and I want to experience it as a reality, not something that I imagine. I would like to gather some experiences in this life that will give me that tranquil state and reenact to get a more perfect version than I have been able to experience. This is the essence of the second part of the pūjā, the offering of the Sixty Four Intimate Services to God.

You try to see all the elements of Goddess in another human being. You invoke the Goddess into a little girl, a single woman or a couple and you worship them as embodiments of Goddess. Goddess is also in you, whether you are male or female. It is Goddess who is worshipping herself.

This is where the question of Tantrā comes in. Tantrā speaks of interaction with others. The question is: as you relate yourself with others, are you trying to keep your separateness and relate to them as separate entities, or are you trying to relate to others through merging as you relate to yourself?

Jesus Christ has given a beautiful answer to this question. It is worth repeating. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Not as somebody else, because if you think of your neighbor as somebody else then the question of desire, of lust, of judgment can come in. If you are loving thy neighbor as thyself, is there any desire in that? If there is desire it can be fulfilled without any restrictions or inhibitions. If I want to enjoy myself, love myself, or make love to myself, who can stop me? I am free.

I go into the bathroom and take a soap to wash my body. Is the rest of my body ashamed that my right hand is taking the soap and rubbing me all over? It is not. There cannot be a sense of shame in unity. In the context of pūjā, notion of unity rather than separation is to be experienced. The idea that what I am seeing is myself should never be lost sight of.

For intimacy to happen there can be no restrictions of any sort. That is where the nudity comes into tantrā. You cannot surrender yourself to your partner if you say, “I am a woman. I must not remove my clothes.” You and your partner are not different people. You are trying to merge into one.

The word digambara does not mean just the removal of clothes. It is a merging of the minds, of thoughts. You are thinking the same thoughts that I am thinking. You are experiencing the same things that I am experiencing. There is a transference into the other being, an expansion of your consciousness to include the other being as yourself. Both of you are experiencing the same thoughts without talking. That is digambara. That is when you are united. That is the intent of Tantrā.

Touch alone is not the intent of Tantrā. All the five senses are included. When I am able to see you, when I can touch you, taste you, talk to you, experience you in all possible ways, like I am experiencing myself, then I can say, okay, I have seen God. Otherwise it is only a partial manifestation. I don't want a partial experience, I want a totality, the love of God directly.

In the 64 intimate services to the Mother, you are giving Her a bath and She is giving you a bath at the same time. Both experiences are there. You are not different from Her. What She is experiencing you are experiencing. It is only when the experience is common that you can say the union has taken effect.

Suppose I rub my right hand over my left hand, the feeling of being touched is in the left hand. The feeling of touching is in the right hand. Both these hands belong to me. Both these experiences belong to me, they are occurring in me at the same time. But if I am touching someone else, the experience of touching is in me, but the experience of being touched is not in me. The separateness has come. If I am being touched by somebody else, then the act of being touched is there but the act of touching is not in me.

When your consciousness pervades the consciousness of the other, then you are totally united. You have lost your boundaries. When you are experiencing yourself as the other, the sense of shame has no place. You are not ashamed of yourself. The sense of other has no relevance. It is only in the sense of advaita (in a sense of unity) the pūjā should be performed.

Advaita in theory is Vēda. Advaita in practice is Tantrā. Tantrā means practice, proving the ideas through experiment. Through practice you try to prove and become clear about what the theory has said.

Each of the four Vēdas have certain aspects of tantrā:

1. Ŕg Vēda is what you have seen or heard in your meditation.

2. Yajur Vēda is the compilation of these individual pieces of revelation into a structure that can be used as a ritual.

3. Sāma Vēda is the singing and dancing rituals spontaneously.

4. Atharvaṇa Vēda is how to apply and share this knowledge, how to use it as a weapon to remove evil tendencies in us or to attract, empower and help somebody.

Sometimes you have got to hurt. What is it that you have to hurt? Your fear you have got to hurt. You have got to get rid of it. Your lust you have got to hurt, to get rid of it; your internal enemies you have got to kill. That is what Devī does. She kills Mahiṣāsura; a buffalo is to be offered as sacrifice to Her.

What is this Mahiṣa? Mahiṣa is the bull which represents blind, hurtful lust. Lust has to be transformed into something higher. Lust means that the notion of the other is preserved and you want it badly, no matter what cost. You want to grab and seek only for your pleasure, ignoring the other's sentiments or feelings. That is lust. This has to be transformed.

Transformation means changing its nature. Transformation means killing its present nature, and giving birth to a new nature.

However, love cannot survive without lust. Let us understand this. The lotus flower is born in the mud, then grows in the water. Its flower comes out into the open, into air, and looks to the light and blooms when the sun comes out.

We are like the lotus. You are born in flesh. You can say, “I don't want this flesh, I want to throw it away,” and then you cut off the lotus from the stem. It is the lotus itself that will die.

It is the fear, the lust, the greed and the jealousy which are transformed into love. It is the demonic that have to be transformed into the divine. But you cannot totally destroy the disorder. Order and disorder have to be in balance.