Your Body as Śrī Cakra

Your body is a Śrī Cakra. The awareness that is spreading throughout your body is the Śrī Devi. Then you will understand that the different awarenesses felt inside you are the different forms that are shown here. By you we mean not merely your body, but the entire Cosmos. These are all giving shapes to the feats of awarenesses, the feats of consciousness. In Patanjali Yoga Sutras, he says that if you keep your consciousness in different parts of your body, then you will get a different Siddhi, or attainment.

These idols define places in the Śrī Cakra. They have certain kinds of weapons. You have to understand what their places in the Śrī Cakra are and you have to understand what kind of concentration you must have in them in order to get a certain attainment. All these things are embedded in the locations of these idols and the ornaments and weapons they are having are all significant.

Why so many idols? It is confusing, but it is to prove to you that in-spite of all their variety, they are just one. You must de-confuse yourself. This deconfusing process is Sādhana. Confusion is created in Hinduism as a problem for you to solve. To solve this problem is what liberates you.

You have ears, you have eyes, you have skin. You are experiencing the world through your eyes, seeing a visual picture. You are hearing the world through your ears, hearing as a musical expression; musical expression is totally different from the visual expression or experience. Each one has its own individuality. Yet you are not looking at the eye and saying it is an ear; nor looking at an ear and saying it is an eye; nor at skin and saying it is an ear or an eye. You have given them different names because they are appearing different to you, you are experiencing them differently.

So what is wrong in having different aspects of your awareness appearing in different forms, in different identities? So, if in your body there can be so many different individualities, why can't there be different flow of awarenesses in the cosmic, creative, sustaining, nourishing and deabsorbing powers?

You are one. You are experiencing these different things, but are they different from you? There is unity in you. The same way in the Cosmos also. There are differences and there are unities also. So to show these differences, you show the different forms. And to find unity, you look at the top of the Śrī Cakra, in the Bindu.

Where are “you” located? Are you located in your eyes, in your hands, in your legs? You can lose your hands but you continue to live; you can lose your legs, but you continue to live. You are not located in any of these things. But you are located where your awareness goes. Your expression varies according to the location. So, in the same way that your body merges into the unified awareness of your Self, the Cosmic Awarenesses are also merging into the Parashakti. The transcendental Śakti is one, but its expression is many.

For example - there are the Pañcabhūtas, there are the five elements, the five properties, the five organs of action. They are different, they have different functions, spaces to work in.

The Theology of the Nude Goddess

The woman is the symbol of the beauty and aesthetics of nature. In this whole world it is only mankind that is wearing clothes. Every other living form is in the nude, in its natural state. So .0001% of the entire universe is wearing clothes. So if you want to represent Nature, it should be shown in the nude.

While the idols are shown in the nude, we are not seeing them as nude. It is only because we are wearing clothes that when we take them away we think of the body as nude. Our clothes are helping us to cover our blemishes, to create an artificial beauty where it is not there. The clothes help us to create a distinction between the Self and the non-self, between who I am and what I am seeing.

Here, all the murtis as depicted as Devatas. They wear the clothes appropriate to Devatas. the Devatas are all-pervasive. They go to the ends of all directions. They are in every place and every time. So they can't be covered by anything. They wear decorations and ornaments. And that is natural. But their beauty is such that the ornaments become beautiful through their example only.

Śrī Mata is the Mother that gives birth to everyone. When we say that she is the mother of everyone, then we have to ask the question, "Then where is everyone born?" The obvious answer is through the female genitals. That is the place where the procreative power of God lies. For the Śakteyas who worship the Motherhood of every woman, she is called "Bhagārādhyā" in Lalitā Sahasranāma. Bhagā means the yoni, the female genital, and she is worshipped in that. That is why it is important to display the genital, because you have to worship it, to develop an attitude of worship towards that.

Śrī Cakra means the whole world and the place where it is displayed is the womb of the Mother. If you look at Kañci Kāmākṣī idol, there is the picture of the womb in front and the Śrī Cakra is shown inside. The Śrī Cakra She is the Universal Mother. She has given birth to the entire Cosmos which is kept inside Her womb.

Adi Deva, the primal God, is Liṅga Svarūpa. Its place is Garbhalaya, Garbha means the womb. Creativity, procreation is the duty of mankind, because life is so rare. The line of life should not be broken. This dharma, this duty, that we have towards our parents who have given life to us, we must repay that debt by giving life to continue the race.

This dharma is personified as “Vṛṣabha'' which is another way of saying Vṛṣaṇa which means the testes. The testes is the seed container. You must first look through the bull (Nandi) in front of the Liṅgam, which that first you must energize the Liṅgam towards creativity and then you must look at the Liṅgam. Śiva is the Liṅgam which has the desire to procreate, otherwise it is called Śava. In the Saundaryalaharī it says, "Sivaḥ śaktyā yukto yadibhavati śaktaḥ prabhavituṃ…." Only when Śiva is united with Śakti, showing the desire to procreate, then He is to be worshipped, not otherwise. Then He called Śiva. Otherwise He is a corpse.

Only the erect male member is considered to be Śiva. Just as the female genital is the mother in the Sṛṣṭi, which is taking place through the intercourse, the male genital is the father of everyone. That is considered to be the Śivaliṅga.

In the olden days, the Śivaliṅgas and the Yonis were shown as the male and female genitals. But when the Muslim and Christian rule was there, our people accepted their arguments that this was nonsense. So they have changed their shapes into unrecognizable round objects without any contours in them, which kept them from being recognized as the male or female genitals. They have become names only - Liṅgam and Yoni.

There are four aims in life. They are what we call in the Saṅkalpa at the beginning of each Pūjā, "Dharma, Artha, Kāma, and Mokṣa”.

Dharma is Duty, and it is personified by the desire to continue the race;

Artha means the acquisition of wealth and prosperity. You should be prosperous and you should make the people around you prosperous;

Kāma means lust, and it is to be directed towards liberation, towards Mokṣa.

Mokṣa means liberation, the liberation from the identification of yourself with your body, the shackles of your body. You pass a life-long sentence of imprisonment when you think that you are only your body. You have to get out of that prison and move towards liberation. That can be possible only when lust is directed toward liberation.

Now, there are other human weaknesses besides lust like anger, like fear, like greed, like delusion, like pride, like jealousy. None of these things have been considered as aims in life. Why was lust listed as one of the aims of life? Because lust has the potential to be transformed into love. And love has the potential to transform itself into liberation. It is for this reason that lust, Kāma, has been included as one of the Puruṣārthas.

All the Tantric texts state that once lust is universalized and used in the context of worship, then both here and there are available. But this loud voice that the texts are using is in the Sanskrit language, and Sanskrit is no longer spoken in India and so we can't understand it. Mechanically we recite Dharma, Artha, Kāma, Mokṣa, but we don't stop to consider what Kāma means really.

If we say that lust should not be there, if we put a halter to it and say that we should not have it at all, and deny ourselves the joys of union, even then it will not go away. It will change its form and become anger. When you are denied what you desire, then it becomes anger and anger becomes violence, aggressiveness, terrorism, all those things which tend to destroy the society. The reason that these aggressive acts are there is because of unfulfilled desires. All the criticism that says that the Hindu scriptures are obscene do not really understand what the Tantras intend. They do not know the purpose of lust, they do not know how to utilize that.

Convert lust into love in the proper way, into Śriṅgāra. Śriṅgāra means, find out what the other person wants and offer him that.

When you are able to transform lust into love, then it becomes Madhura bhakti, sweet devotion, the path of devotion and love towards God. That is why Śrī Kṛṣṇa was supposed to have 16,000 lovers. And that is acceptable. So why can't Lalitā have 16,000 lovers?

Lalitā is the equivalent of Śrī Kṛṣṇa. She is the Guru. When you convert your lust into love, then it flourishes as literature, as Music, Dance as Fine arts, as the creative qualities of everyone. The best qualities of everyone come up in this transformation process: having a good heart, a compassionate heart towards everyone; not deceiving others; Ahimsā - not violating or hurting others in any way in body, mind or spirit; harmony takes the place of violence. All these things happen when lust is transformed into love. In God or in Devi when you have Śriṅgāra, then you are converted from being a human into being a Divine Being.

This is what is meant that the Gopis have love towards Kṛṣṇa. If you want to have union, then you must have union with God. They say that if you sing, then God dances for you; if you dance for God, he comes and embraces you; and if you shed your ego and offer yourself, and request God to have union with you, then you receive liberation. These truths work equally well for Devi.

The reason all these figures are seen in the nude is to tell people that you must worship creativity in the form of Devi, in the form of the female. You must request Devi to give you Saubhāgya, give you prosperity, give you the pleasure and enjoyment in this life. You have got 10,000 million women in this world. You you can worship all of them as the Divine Mother then this will be your last life, you will receive Mokṣa. This is the purpose of the Yoni Pūjā. When you transform lust into love this way, then the Kuṇḍalinī Śakti becomes awakened.

For those people who are not interested in mere criticism and who truly want to understand and appreciate and learn more about these things, then we are here to instruct them in the intricacies and details of the Sādhana according to the Kaula Saṃpradāya.

Mother is worshipped as Gaurī, Lakṣmī and Vāṇī, as Kriyā, Jñāna, and Icchā Śakti.

As the Kriyā Śakti, the Devi manifests in intercourse. And intercourse resides in the genitals of the female.

As Jñāna Śakti, Devi is Lakṣmī, the one who nourishes the baby when it is born. She resides in the female breasts, and she resides in the mother's nourishing and life sustaining milk.

She is the Mother worshipped as Saraswati when Devi resides in the tongue, because speech comes from the tongue, the educative function of the mouth.

By meditating on these places in the body and worshipping them you are getting Kriyā Śakti, Jñāna Śakti, and Saṅkalpa Śakti, or Icchā Śakti.

It is to demonstrate that you must worship the Mother in the female body that these female idols are shown in the nude.

Why Tantra Puts the Goddess First

We can think of God as male, we can think of God as female. It much better to think of God as female, that is what the Upaniṣads say. “Matṛ devo bhava”. A woman who is symbolized by Śrī Mata, is compassionate. By worshipping a woman as the embodiment of Devi, we get all the enjoyment that we want, all the pleasures that we want, we get peace of mind, and in Yoga aspect, we get release from the cycle of births and deaths, we get Mokṣa.

This is why all the murtis are female. Even in the Bindusthanam at the top, there is Sahasrākṣī above Sadāśiva. She is larger in size than Śiva’s idol. In the Saṃpradāya of the tradition sculptures, what is more important is shown as bigger and being above what is less important since the woman is Guru in the Tantra tradition, she is shown as being on top and more, important.

The woman is the dynamic aspect and the man is the static aspect in Tantra. Their combination is what is worshipped in the Bindusthanam. They are existence (Śiva) and awareness (Śakti). Awareness gives meaning to existence and is considered more important.

The Lalitā Sahasranāma says, “Śivā svādhīna-vallabhā.” She is the Wife of Śiva, but Her husband is under Her control. The intent is to tell people that Parāśakti, the dynamic energy that is creating, manifesting and nourishing the entire world is the highest possible truth. The worship of the Mother is to worship the beauty and aesthetics of Nature.