Transformation with Sri Vidya

Guruji: Śrīvidyā means sacred learning in thirteen steps: removing negatives—1. hatred, 2. doubt, 3. fear, 4. rigidity, 5. abhorrence, 6. caste, 7. color, and 8. conformity; and promoting the positives—9. food, 10. breath, 11. thoughts, 12. meditations, 13. play.

It is also a large body of rituals held secret for ages, restricted only to priests because of the immense powers the learning unfolds with practice. The idea was that destructive powers should not be made available to minds without proper discipline and love. The world with all its infinite variety of creations presumably has one or many creator(s), even if it is some powers. We call it/them the God/Goddess, as a generic name.

Those who worship God as male are Śaivas. Moslems, Christians, some Hindus are Śaivas. Some worship God as female; they are Śāktas. Some worship God as both. Since kula means total, they are Kaulas. They worship the universal male, female, and balanced energies of both in union.

What is Śrī Yantra

Śrī Yantra is the sacred geometry of the cosmos and its hologram, you. It helps to connect you to powers creating the world for co-creating a wonderful new world with the Goddess, with grace, abundance, will, knowledge, and creation. Śrī Yantra begins your own journey to cosmic powers starting with awake, dreaming, and asleep states.

The outermost square, sixteen- and eight-petal enclosures, and the circle within.

In the waking state we experience the world around us with our senses and act on it with our motor organs. There appear to be some common feelings about what we know and what we do. We can agree that the world of my experience is the same that you also experience. For example, we decide to meet at a time and a place, and we do meet. So there is this common world out there, and your world is pretty much the same as mine. These knowledges or actions are called open yoginīs. Yoginī is one who connects you to another, rather like a cell phone. She brings you experience of the other. They are common to all. For example, we are afraid; fear is a yoginī called Cāmuṇḍā. We are using technical names; please do not be confused with common usage of the names below.

We experience richness and confusion created by abundance; the yoginī is Mahālakṣmī. We are attracted to beauty; Brāhmī = kāma = lust is a yoginī. Similarly, Māheśvarī = krodha = anger, Kaumārī = lobha = greed, Vaiṣṇavī = moha = clinging, Vārāhī = mada = pride/vanity, Māhendrī = mātsarya = jealousy. These are all yoginīs, eight in all. All the passions we experience are called yoginīs. As long as they keep connecting us to outside world, they will not allow peace; they control us and disturb our poise.

We learn during sādhana processes of how to control these passions and make them serve us. These processes are called Mudrās. They bring us peace and pleasure by keeping our passions in check. These are ten in number:

1. Saṃkṣobhiṇī = agitate

2. Vidrāviṇī = fluidise

3. Ākarṣiṇī = attract

4. Mohinī = delude

5. Unmādinī = madden

6. Aṅkuśa = controlling critical points (like a small goad controlling a big elephant)

7. Khecarī = fly up and away from danger

8. Bīja = seed of evolution

9. Yoni = cause

10. Trikhaṇḍa = creating and dissolving three parts into one, the most important being merging seer and seen into seeing, or space, time, and matter.

When we learn how to apply Mudrās to Mātṛkās, we attain divine powers, called Siddhis: Aṇimā = becoming small like a particle (elongating distance and changing perspective); Laghimā = losing weight (levitation/anti-gravity; superfluids go up walls of containers); and its opposite Garimā, becoming heavy/increasing gravity; Mahimā = becoming large; Īśitva = fulfilling any desire; Vaśitva = control; Prākāmya = huge desire; Bhukti = enjoy; Icchā = will, desire to achieve goal; Prāpti = fulfil goal; Sarva-kāma = all desires fulfilled. Most of these attainments imply the ability to control space, time, and matter, the trinity, whose Sanskrit names are Viṣṇu (space), Kāla (time), and Brahmā (matter) respectively. When we merge all three into one, then we get all these siddhis.

The outer square enclosure of Śrī Cakra houses all these waking-state powers, namely ten siddhis, eight mātṛkās, and ten mudrās. Inside of this there is a lotus of sixteen petals describing powers attracting our dreams without censorship of ego. Our dreams are ours; they are not common to others. The causative factors are called Gupta yoginīs, the secret passions. And deeper inside, there is a lotus of eight petals describing powers active in our deep sleep. Even we are not aware of their workings. They are Anāṅga = bodyless, even more secret yoginīs.

We live in one of these three cakras as an individual separated from the world, nature, the mother. When we leave these three cakras, we die to this world of individual experience and enter a world of astral entities. They are all inside the circle we call the death of ego. We cross it to take birth as a nature spirit.

What is the difference between sleep and death? When we awaken from sleep we wake up into the same body; when we wake up from death, we wake up into a different body, we change our whole address. Everything about us—our body, environment, language, knowledge, shape, relationships, age—changes. We have to learn afresh who we are, who our parents are, who our brothers, sisters, friends, enemies are. All these relationships are temporary. The only relationship that survives death is the sense of I-ness. In “I-am-so-and-so,” the feeling I-am is common; but the so-and-so gets re-defined every time in every life. A thousand years may pass unnoticed; but the same feeling of I is known to all, self-obvious, sort of. That pure common awareness is the God/dess. It is just a witness. It looks like a male when in a male body, and like a female in a female body. It has no gender by itself; looks like the container. Therefore it is compared to water, which takes on the shape of the container.

The middle three cakras are channels to know about the fourteen worlds, inner ten the five cosmic elements and their attributes, outer ten the same for devas.

The inner set of three cakras reveal the eight vibrational frequencies making up the pre-cosmos, three of space, time, and matter, and one of an unchanging world of constants like numbers.

There are two great lineages of gurus: Dattātreya and Dakṣiṇāmūrti.

Guru Dattātreya was given to Atri, a sage, and his wife Anasūyā, and indicates that one can be a householder and still do sādhana. He was openly ritualistic and a great tantric. He taught the worship of Śakti to people from all classes through pañca-makāras, namely, madya = wine, matsya = fish, māṃsa = meat, mudrā = woman willing to receive pūjā, and maithuna = intercourse. These ingredients could mean literally what they say (open, external meaning), or something different than what is apparent (secret, internal). His system is called Kaula, meaning total; internal as well as external worship. Guru Datta taught his system to Paraśurāma, an avatāra of Viṣṇu who encoded it tightly into his famous Kalpasūtra. It is difficult even for paṇḍits knowing Sanskrit well to follow the book because of the secret encoding. In recent times, many translations have been available in print decoding the texts into user-friendly forms.

Guru Dakṣiṇāmūrti was an incarnation of Śiva himself. He mostly teaches meditation and taught his disciples to visualise the Śrī Cakra and do inner worship in silence. The rituals he taught use Śrī Cakra, the greatest of yantras containing the cosmic powers of Śakti. The instructions were given mostly for teacher-class brāhmaṇas who were taught Vedas and followed strict disciplines including celibacy except when children were desired. He propagated cakra pūjā with secret meanings for madya = goddess-intoxicated state, matsya = enjoying free-flowing movements like a fish in the ocean of God, māṃsa = tongue rolled back to touch nasal septum in Khecarī, mudrā = eating fried cereals like bhajjias, maithuna = taking awareness up the spine to top of head to experience joy of uniting Śakti (female principle) with Śiva, the male principle. The highest bliss is to forget who you are and to flow into a world-less timeless awareness, or to merge the seer into the seen. Therefore this state is like the orgasmic release of tensions, when two loving souls forget separation and merge to become one.

We follow both traditions. We recommend meditative techniques to calm-going, peace-loving people (mostly who eat light sāttvic foods) and ritual techniques to action-oriented people (mostly who eat junk/non-veg foods). We have a natural leaning to peaceful and at the same time exciting rituals. We do not insist on changing food habits or to practice celibacy running away from life. We do require that to be on the path, listen attentively to Guru, practice with devotion, and to be aware of God/dess while enjoying worldly comforts.