Building Sivalaya and Kamakhya Peetam

Guruji overseeing preparation of the Sivalaya temple building site, 1983.

(from "The Goddess and the Guru"):

When he wasn’t at work on a building site, Guruji could often be found reviewing plans and preparing for the multitude of jobs that lay ahead. One early disciple recalled making a long spiritual pilgrimage to Devipuram, only to find Guruji deeply absorbed in the niceties of concrete construction—and in no particular mood to discuss more transcendent matters.

Devipuram’s first two temples arose from the jungle almost simultaneously—the one on the hilltop called Sivalaya (Shiva-alaya, or “Abode of Shiva”), and the one at the yoni called Kamakhya Peetam (“Seat of Kamakhya”). Both structures were necessarily uncomplicated in design. Kamakhya consists of a single, large rectangular room built over the yoni ledge; Sivalaya is slightly larger with several rooms and an open floor plan.

Construction conditions were difficult and the work arduous. The stairway that now ascends the hill from Kamakhya to Sivalaya did not yet exist, so workers had to scale the steep, rugged terrain multiple times per day, lugging needed tools and materials along with them.

And before construction of Sivalaya could even begin, the craggy stone peak of the hill required leveling. Dynamite would have been the choice of most professional excavators, but Guruji lacked not only the funds and expertise for that, but also the will: he did not wish to inflict such extreme violence upon nature in the name of constructing a temple. In his view, the entire parcel was the Goddess’s body, to be treated with due reverence and respect. So after conducting a Praja Yagna ritual for the minerals, plants, animals, and spirits who might be disturbed or displaced by the temple project, Guruji enlisted residents from two nearby villages to carry out the task by hand.

Guruji atop the Sivalaya temple, 1984

“I still remember the rocks being manually broken atop the hill,” Suryalakshmi said. “So many villagers were involved—initially the people from Ammulapalem were organized; later people from Balijapalem came in as well. In all, it took about two months.”

Once a sufficiently level surface was achieved, work on the temple itself began in earnest. The structure, sheltering a massive yoni-lingam in strikingly anthropomorphic form, would eventually be enhanced by a shaded patio and a rooftop terrace featuring a large Sri Meru, all overlooking the spectacular green hills and valleys that spread to the horizon in every direction—while also, Guruji added on a practical note, “affording the temple complex some degree of visibility from the road.”

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Meanwhile, halfway down the hill, the small, freshwater spring and rustic yoni shrine where Guruji had seen his transformative vision of Kamakhya were also being expanded and developed. Walls began to rise around the ledge, and a roof was installed.

Yet Haran Aiya’s daughter Saru recalled being much more awestruck by the original yoni formation when she saw it as a young teenager.

“It was nothing like what’s there now; you wouldn’t even recognize it,” she said. “No concrete work had been done yet, so you could still see the actual boulders that Guruji found, the exact place where he meditated and saw Kamakhya—and the yoni they formed was so unbelievable, so graphic! If you knew what you were looking at you would say, ‘Holy cow, am I really seeing this?’”

As part of the temple construction, the yoni crevice that Guruji discovered had been largely covered, shaped, defined, and somewhat abstracted by stone and concrete work.

“I believe he stylized it to the point where it is now, precisely because the way he found it—the way it had been for the people who did the homa there centuries ago—was just too graphic,” Saru said. “I remember thinking it was a shame to cover it up. I asked Guruji why that was necessary, and he told me that it just hit too close to home, that people nowadays just couldn’t handle that kind of thing, they couldn’t accept it.”

Amma at Kamakhya Peetam, mid-1980s.

But while Saru understood Guruji’s decision, she still felt something was lost in the translation.

“In a sense, I think it undermined the validity of it, the historic continuity,” she said. “Because if you’re seeing it right in front of your eyes, how can you question it? It’s there—she’s there. But when you cover it and show just that small portion that can be seen today, the original ‘wow!’ impact is lost. From the structure that’s there today, you can’t even envision how it used to look. But even though I was only 13 at the time, I was fortunate enough to have seen it, and I’d like to document that—I want people to know what it was like before.”