nṛtta-avasāne naṭa-rāja-rājo nanāda ḍhakkāṃ nava-pañca-vāram |
uddhartu-kāmaḥ sanakādi-siddhān etad vimarśe śiva-sūtra-jālam ||
The stanza means:
“At the end of the dance, the King of Dancers, Śiva, beat on his drum fourteen times (9 + 5), wanting to further enlighten the great ascetics starting with Sanaka. We shall discuss some of these important aphorisms, known as the Maheśvara Sūtra.”
This Maheśvara Sūtra occupies a seminal place in the history of Hindu religion. They form the basis of Bharata’s dance form, Pāṇini’s grammar of Sanskrit literature, and Patañjali’s Yoga.
There is a story that the Creator became tired of creating himself. So he created four children—Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanatkumāra, and Sanatsujāta—and requested them to continue the job of procreation. However, they refused to do so, thinking that the lowly sexual mode of reproduction was not for them, which their father was doing. So they chose to remain eternally young at the age of four, when sex has not yet knocked at their door.
To help them understand life and its purposes better, the King of Dancers (dance = life), Śiva—who is erotic in the nine worlds below and an ascetic in the five worlds above—played on his drum 9 + 5 = 14 times, representing the paths to be found in all the fourteen worlds. As we shall see presently, these drumbeats are none other than the seed mantras (sounds) of the Sanskrit alphabet.
The drumbeats are:
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a i u ṇ
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ṛ ḷ k
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e o ṅ
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ai au c
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ha ya va ra ṭ
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la ṇ
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ṅa ma ña ṇa na m
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jha bha ñ
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gha ḍha dha ṣ
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ja ba ga ḍa da ś
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kha pha cha ṭha ṭha ca ṭa ta v
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ka pa y
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śa ṣa sa r
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ha l
1. A I U Ṇ
A, the first letter, stands for negation. Awareness exists in two states: awareness that is not even aware of itself—that is the first state, “A,” like a zero; and awareness that is aware of itself, like a zero that is the sum of opposites, for example (1.5) + (–1.5) = 0. A small deviation, a small movement—that is the second state. Awareness has these two properties of oneness and manyness.
I is the second letter. It is the desire of awareness to know itself by splitting into subject and object.
U, to preserve the desire, is called “u.” That is sthiti (preservation). Sṛṣṭi, the creation, has not occurred in “A.” Only when “A” desires to manifest itself does it become an orgasmically elongated “Ā.” This desire is represented by “I.” When “I” is fully expressed, it becomes “Ī” (long). The desire to preserve that altered state of awareness is “U” and “Ū.”
2. Ṛ, Ḷ
When awareness is observing a part of itself, the observed part appears to it as if it does not have awareness. So awareness is creating a non-awareness relative to itself in this process. This is represented by ṛ and ḷ. These vowel sounds are considered to be of neutral gender, denoting objects which are not experienced in the same way as the subject experiences itself.
3. E O
4. AI AU
Then creation proceeds further through the letters e, o; ai, au.
A + i = e
A + u = o
E + a = ai
E + u = au
Am is the seed held within the subject; aḥ is the seed expressed outside itself as an object. So creation, preservation, and dissolution of the object are being mapped by the vowel sounds of the Sanskrit alphabet. This completes the formation of the vowel sounds.
5. Ha Ya Va Ra
The desire to procreate comes down from the sky to earth as the consonants ha, ya, va, ra.
Ha means space. Haṃ is the center of the viśuddhi, the throat chakra.
Ya means life, prāṇa. Yaṃ is the center of the anāhata, the heart chakra.
Va means waters, the source of life. Vaṃ is the center of the maṇipūra, the navel chakra.
Ra means heat. Raṃ is at the svādhiṣṭhāna chakra, the sex center.
In yogic parlance today, water is described to be at the genitals and fire at the navel. This order is reversed in the Śiva Sūtras for a good reason. Lust is the heat in the loins which melts the seed, which goes into the mother’s womb and grows there in the waters of life. So, in these sūtras, water is supposed to be at the navel center. This is also the view of Śaṅkara, as propounded in his Saundarya Laharī, a hymn to the Mother Goddess.
6. La
The next sound is la. It is shown separately from ha, ya, va, ra, because it is the last and densest objectification of the five states of aggregation of matter (called elements here).
Next, the attributes of these elements are discussed.
7. Ṅa Ma Ña Ṇa Na
Ṅa means vibration. Space has only one attribute: sound.
Ma means touch. Air has two attributes: sound, touch.
Ña means form. Fire has three attributes: sound, touch, form.
Ṇa means taste. Liquid has four attributes: sound, touch, form, taste.
Na means smell. Solid has all five attributes: sound, touch, form, taste, smell.
The five states of aggregation—Space, Air, Fire, Water, and Solid—have each one more attribute than their predecessor. Since an entity is known by its attributes, we can say these attributes are what make these elements. So we observe that matter is information formed from sensations, or derived from them.
The Sūtras 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 are elaborations on the same lines. We shall ignore them, as we have covered the basic structures needed for our discussions on Śrī Cakra.
Each letter of the Sanskrit alphabet has a very precise meaning. Each letter has cosmic, individual, and microcosmic meanings. If you look at the Vedic language, you will see that sentences rarely, if at all, repeat themselves. It is an irreducible representation. You cannot condense it any further than it already is.
The Vedas are highly coded forms of information, like the RNA and DNA codes of genes. They code the information of life so tightly that you cannot reduce them any further. The Vedic language is condensed into these alphabets, which are irreducible representations of the original meanings connected with the sounds from the drumbeats of Śiva.
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