The Central Triangle
From the point (Bindu) you have two points and the interval between them. From one you are moving into three and this triad is symbolized by the central triangle of the Sri Chakra. The triangle is the creation of the interval. Since space time and matter (created by the curving space around time) are all ways of looking at this interval, we know that Sristi, Sthiti and Laya the creation, sustenance and reabsorption are all the same, but appering to function differently under the power of the triangle. Expansion of the bindu into the triangle is the projection of the cosmic awareness into separateness, through a wave like phenomenon. It is a limitation. It is called Maya. Symbol of Maya is the seed letter "Hrim". Hrim means Hara (Siva) + Hari(Vishnu) + and Virinci (Brahma). Hara is the symbol of the unity and time( minterval measured in time), Hari is the symbol of the duality and space(interval measured in space), and Virinci is the symbol of creation and matter(interval measured in spacetime).
You can also think of them as the past, the present and the future. Future is dying to create the present moment, and the Present is dying to create past. The Future is being pushed into the present and the present is being pushed into the past. That is what time is doing when it is moving. It is manifesting the future and pushing the present into the past. Looking at it another way you can say the present is the creation of the future and the past is the creation of the present. So again you see the identity of two ways of looking at the same process.
Let us then say that there is some power inherent in the awareness itself to know itself and that power is manifesting as if there is a mirror. The mirror is so pure that you are not even aware that it is in front of you. So what you are seeing is a reflection of yourself. That mirror is called your mind, or the the cosmic mind. In the cosmic mind, God reflects his/her own image and reflects on it.
God is neither male nor female nor neuter. All genders are included. Everything, everyone is included in the manifested state. This is true, not only in the case of the cosmic intelligence, but also of the individual intelligence. Your mind is a mirror in which you are seeing yourself reflected. No matter how complicated the world seems to mbe, it is only yourself that you are seeing. No matter how varied it looks trees, birds, males, females, things, land, sea, sky, sun, moon, stars, galaxies, none of these things existed if you did not exist. For billions of years you did not exist. Where was this world then?
Existence is awareness. Deny existence itself. Then, can there be awareness? Thus existence implies awareness. Awareness implies existence too, self evidently. Since these two imply each other, they contain each other. So they are not two separate entities, but they are indeed one and the same entity. Existence is called Siva, Awareness is called Shakti. Siva is therefore called Sthanuunmoving.
Their unity creates the flow of experience and the flow of experience is called Bliss Ananda, or Satchitananda. You can say that the 3 points of the central triangle are Sat Chit and Ananda. You can define it in terms of creation, sustenance and destruction, or, you can define it in terms of the Seer, the Seen and the act of Seeing, or, the Measurer, the Measured and the act of Measuring all these things are the meanings, associations, of this triangle.
Now it stands to reason that if there is a centrifugal power in the awareness which explodes this point into a triangle, there must be a centripetal power that implodes the triangle back into the point.
We have discussed so far the point and the triangle of the Sri Chakra. These are the most fundamental things. This itself is a great yantra a point from which universe comes out spiralling and transforms itself into a triangle. It is one of the first seen diagrams, called Tripura Bhairavi. The triangle is called the yoni, the source, the gate through which everyone comes into being. It is the "I", the Kama Kala, the desirefor variety, the desire for life to experience existence. "I" plus "A" the Shakti and Siva, the triangle and the bindu is the creative power behind the cosmos. This is the explosive, expansive power of the awareness. To shift itself away from its point of focus is called "Hrim", and a call back to the center is called "Srim". Both are great powers. "Srim" undoes what Hrim does. The seed letter Hrim, creates individuation, limiting the cosmic awareness to individual awareness. The seed letter Srim removes limitations and the individual is exploded into cosmic awareness. So Hrim and Srim are inverse operators.
"Om"(=A+U+m) is the name of God. We say "Om Hrim Srim" as a mantra to imply that the world came out of God and is going back to it. Hrim is the power that makes the point into the triangle and Srim is the power which collapses the triangle back to into the point.
Interestingly, Om consists of the seed letters A+ U+ M. Just a cyclic permutation U+M+A reads as Uma. Om is the name of Siva and Uma is the name of Shakti. It is just two ways of looking at the same entity. If we begin with existence A, it looks like Siva; if we begin with awareness U, it looks like Shakti.
The 8-Triangle Figure
Expansion of Hrim is expressed in terms of the 8 groups of letters in Sanskrit starting with a..k..c..t..t..p..y..s. There is a very nice correlation between the numbers of successive triangles you find in the Sri Chakra with the numbers found in the electron shells of the atomic structure. 1, 3, 8, 10, 10, 14. Considering the importance of Sri Chakra and the atomic structure, we cannot dismiss this correspondence as a mere chance.
Filled Electron - Shells - Sri Chakra - Indian Philosophy:
(1s)2 (2s)2 =4 The center and three points of triangle. Seer, Seen, Seeing
(2s)2 (2p)6 =8 8 cornered figure, the sounds of creation. Words of God, life
(3d)10 =10 Inner 10 cornered figure. 5 Elements, 5 Properties
(4d)10 =10 Outer 10 cornered figure. 5 Senses, 5 Motors
(4f)14 =14 14 cornered figure. 14 worlds of experience
This completes the creation of the elements. The Sri Chakra represents the microcosm of the atoms, the individual and also the cosmos. It represents the source of the cosmos, and the gateway to individual life. It is a symbol at three levels.
This expansion process which brings the point to the triangle does not end there because space and time start interacting creating matter and the expansion process is then shown as 8 triangles, each triangle representing a form of Saraswati.
Each triangle is a Yoni. Yoni means a source, a gate, from which life comes. You can also interpret yoni as the cause for time to flow. In a human metaphor, yoni is the vulva, the gate through which life's journey begins, causing time to flow for an individual. Death is also a yoni; it causes time to stop for an individual. Cosmos becomes an individual through a Yoni of birth; an individual becomes cosmos through the Yoni of death.
The flow of time is really a predecessor/successor relationship. This precedes that. This is the cause of that. This present moment is the cause of the future moment. This continuous relationship of causes to effects is the movement of time. Movement of time is called Karma. You sow the seed, you reap the fruit accordingly. It is very important to realise that your Karma, the way you experience life, is not determined by you alone; all life together has a very big part in it. So respect for life is part of good Karma.
As time creates life, and time destroys life too. So she is Gouri the universal mother, the vulva. She is also Kali the destroyer, the funeral pyre. Both these aspects are combined into one triangle.
The 10-Cornered Figures - The Inner and Outer sets of Triangles
This process of exploding the cosmos through the interaction of space and time goes on. The cosmos expresses itself in terms of the five elements or the five states of aggregation. The word element is used in Sanskrit to mean states of aggregation the solid state, the liquid state, plasma state, the gaseous state and the vacuum state. These are the five elements and their properties are sound, touch , form, taste and smell. This set of five elements and their five properties constitute the set of inner ten triangles of the Sri Chakra. The outer ten triangles of the Sri Chakra constitute the individuation from the cosmos. They are called the five sensory and five motor organs. Let me draw a small diagram here. Imagine this paper is an field of consciousness. Let us draw a picture of a pot. Once you draw a pot you can say that there is something outsideit and something inside it, even though the inside is connected with the outside. Let us now draw an arrow going into the pot. You say, aha there is an arrow coming from the outside to the inside.
This is our ordinary perception of the world. The world is outside and I am inside. What I think I am is inside. But I am connected to the world. But I forgot about that. I see this piece of information is coming to me from the outside world. This piece of information is called knowledge.
And if there is an arrow going from inside to outside? This is called action. You are acting in the world and the world knows about you through your actions. Supposing the boundary was not there and just the arrow was there? Where is the arrow going, inside or outside? You cannot say, because there is no inside and no outside if the pot is not there. In that case it is both. What this means that what goes inside, knowledge, is the same as that which goes outside, action. The fundamental equation Knowledge=Action (K=A) is valid only when the boundary is absent.
This means that you can create, you can manifest only when you get rid of your body awareness. As long as your consciousness is limited to your body awareness, there is no manifestation, and this equation is invalid, because you are able to distinguish K from A. When K becomes A you of necessity have to get rid of your body awareness. That is called the digambara state. That is where the siddhis manifest.
As long as you are aware of your body, as long as you are aware that you are clothed, as long as you are aware that you have an individual mind, as long as your individual thoughts are flowing through your individual mind, so long you do not have siddhi. Siddhi means the equation K=A. Just by thinking deeply you manifest. There is no distinction, there is no time gap, there is no interval between the thought and its creation. That is what we call manifestation. The necessary and sufficient condition for obtaining any siddhi of any kind is the loss of body awareness. This means we have to stop our mind from being agitated by external influences.
This is why in Devi you find the five senses which are the five arrows. These are the channels through which your mind can be disturbed. She holds them separate from the mind which is the bow. The bow and the five arrows, are indeed the mind and the five senses. She holds them separately. She does not connect the arrow to the bow, which means that Devi represents the yogic state where you decouple your mind from disturbing sensory inputs. But even when this mind is decoupled from the senses, there is still another part of the mind which is the memory. The memory contains in it all the senses and it keeps on bringing these things up. All those things also have to be decoupled. The mind itself has to go. It is then that you are flowing in the cosmic awareness.
The outer set of 10 triangles represent the five sensory and the five motor organs of the individual. As you are moving out from the Bindu of the Sri Chakra, you are moving farther and farther away from yourself, from being the cosmos to being an individual.
You can describe the explosion process of creation in terms of three stages: 1. explosion of the interface, the act of seeing which is connecting the inside with the outside manifesting the 8 triangles, 2. the explosion of the outer universemanifested in the inner 10 triangles, and 3. the explosion of the inner self, the egowhich is the outer 10 triangles of the Sri Chakra.
From the point (Bindu) you have two points and the interval between them. From one you are moving into three and this triad is symbolized by the central triangle of the Sri Chakra. The triangle is the creation of the interval. Since space time and matter (created by the curving space around time) are all ways of looking at this interval, we know that Sristi, Sthiti and Laya the creation, sustenance and reabsorption are all the same, but appering to function differently under the power of the triangle. Expansion of the bindu into the triangle is the projection of the cosmic awareness into separateness, through a wave like phenomenon. It is a limitation. It is called Maya. Symbol of Maya is the seed letter "Hrim". Hrim means Hara (Siva) + Hari(Vishnu) + and Virinci (Brahma). Hara is the symbol of the unity and time( minterval measured in time), Hari is the symbol of the duality and space(interval measured in space), and Virinci is the symbol of creation and matter(interval measured in spacetime).
You can also think of them as the past, the present and the future. Future is dying to create the present moment, and the Present is dying to create past. The Future is being pushed into the present and the present is being pushed into the past. That is what time is doing when it is moving. It is manifesting the future and pushing the present into the past. Looking at it another way you can say the present is the creation of the future and the past is the creation of the present. So again you see the identity of two ways of looking at the same process.
Let us then say that there is some power inherent in the awareness itself to know itself and that power is manifesting as if there is a mirror. The mirror is so pure that you are not even aware that it is in front of you. So what you are seeing is a reflection of yourself. That mirror is called your mind, or the the cosmic mind. In the cosmic mind, God reflects his/her own image and reflects on it.
God is neither male nor female nor neuter. All genders are included. Everything, everyone is included in the manifested state. This is true, not only in the case of the cosmic intelligence, but also of the individual intelligence. Your mind is a mirror in which you are seeing yourself reflected. No matter how complicated the world seems to mbe, it is only yourself that you are seeing. No matter how varied it looks trees, birds, males, females, things, land, sea, sky, sun, moon, stars, galaxies, none of these things existed if you did not exist. For billions of years you did not exist. Where was this world then?
Existence is awareness. Deny existence itself. Then, can there be awareness? Thus existence implies awareness. Awareness implies existence too, self evidently. Since these two imply each other, they contain each other. So they are not two separate entities, but they are indeed one and the same entity. Existence is called Siva, Awareness is called Shakti. Siva is therefore called Sthanuunmoving.
Their unity creates the flow of experience and the flow of experience is called Bliss Ananda, or Satchitananda. You can say that the 3 points of the central triangle are Sat Chit and Ananda. You can define it in terms of creation, sustenance and destruction, or, you can define it in terms of the Seer, the Seen and the act of Seeing, or, the Measurer, the Measured and the act of Measuring all these things are the meanings, associations, of this triangle.
Now it stands to reason that if there is a centrifugal power in the awareness which explodes this point into a triangle, there must be a centripetal power that implodes the triangle back into the point.
We have discussed so far the point and the triangle of the Sri Chakra. These are the most fundamental things. This itself is a great yantra a point from which universe comes out spiralling and transforms itself into a triangle. It is one of the first seen diagrams, called Tripura Bhairavi. The triangle is called the yoni, the source, the gate through which everyone comes into being. It is the "I", the Kama Kala, the desirefor variety, the desire for life to experience existence. "I" plus "A" the Shakti and Siva, the triangle and the bindu is the creative power behind the cosmos. This is the explosive, expansive power of the awareness. To shift itself away from its point of focus is called "Hrim", and a call back to the center is called "Srim". Both are great powers. "Srim" undoes what Hrim does. The seed letter Hrim, creates individuation, limiting the cosmic awareness to individual awareness. The seed letter Srim removes limitations and the individual is exploded into cosmic awareness. So Hrim and Srim are inverse operators.
"Om"(=A+U+m) is the name of God. We say "Om Hrim Srim" as a mantra to imply that the world came out of God and is going back to it. Hrim is the power that makes the point into the triangle and Srim is the power which collapses the triangle back to into the point.
Interestingly, Om consists of the seed letters A+ U+ M. Just a cyclic permutation U+M+A reads as Uma. Om is the name of Siva and Uma is the name of Shakti. It is just two ways of looking at the same entity. If we begin with existence A, it looks like Siva; if we begin with awareness U, it looks like Shakti.
The 8-Triangle Figure
Expansion of Hrim is expressed in terms of the 8 groups of letters in Sanskrit starting with a..k..c..t..t..p..y..s. There is a very nice correlation between the numbers of successive triangles you find in the Sri Chakra with the numbers found in the electron shells of the atomic structure. 1, 3, 8, 10, 10, 14. Considering the importance of Sri Chakra and the atomic structure, we cannot dismiss this correspondence as a mere chance.
Filled Electron - Shells - Sri Chakra - Indian Philosophy:
(1s)2 (2s)2 =4 The center and three points of triangle. Seer, Seen, Seeing
(2s)2 (2p)6 =8 8 cornered figure, the sounds of creation. Words of God, life
(3d)10 =10 Inner 10 cornered figure. 5 Elements, 5 Properties
(4d)10 =10 Outer 10 cornered figure. 5 Senses, 5 Motors
(4f)14 =14 14 cornered figure. 14 worlds of experience
This completes the creation of the elements. The Sri Chakra represents the microcosm of the atoms, the individual and also the cosmos. It represents the source of the cosmos, and the gateway to individual life. It is a symbol at three levels.
This expansion process which brings the point to the triangle does not end there because space and time start interacting creating matter and the expansion process is then shown as 8 triangles, each triangle representing a form of Saraswati.
Each triangle is a Yoni. Yoni means a source, a gate, from which life comes. You can also interpret yoni as the cause for time to flow. In a human metaphor, yoni is the vulva, the gate through which life's journey begins, causing time to flow for an individual. Death is also a yoni; it causes time to stop for an individual. Cosmos becomes an individual through a Yoni of birth; an individual becomes cosmos through the Yoni of death.
The flow of time is really a predecessor/successor relationship. This precedes that. This is the cause of that. This present moment is the cause of the future moment. This continuous relationship of causes to effects is the movement of time. Movement of time is called Karma. You sow the seed, you reap the fruit accordingly. It is very important to realise that your Karma, the way you experience life, is not determined by you alone; all life together has a very big part in it. So respect for life is part of good Karma.
As time creates life, and time destroys life too. So she is Gouri the universal mother, the vulva. She is also Kali the destroyer, the funeral pyre. Both these aspects are combined into one triangle.
The 10-Cornered Figures - The Inner and Outer sets of Triangles
This process of exploding the cosmos through the interaction of space and time goes on. The cosmos expresses itself in terms of the five elements or the five states of aggregation. The word element is used in Sanskrit to mean states of aggregation the solid state, the liquid state, plasma state, the gaseous state and the vacuum state. These are the five elements and their properties are sound, touch , form, taste and smell. This set of five elements and their five properties constitute the set of inner ten triangles of the Sri Chakra. The outer ten triangles of the Sri Chakra constitute the individuation from the cosmos. They are called the five sensory and five motor organs. Let me draw a small diagram here. Imagine this paper is an field of consciousness. Let us draw a picture of a pot. Once you draw a pot you can say that there is something outsideit and something inside it, even though the inside is connected with the outside. Let us now draw an arrow going into the pot. You say, aha there is an arrow coming from the outside to the inside.
This is our ordinary perception of the world. The world is outside and I am inside. What I think I am is inside. But I am connected to the world. But I forgot about that. I see this piece of information is coming to me from the outside world. This piece of information is called knowledge.
And if there is an arrow going from inside to outside? This is called action. You are acting in the world and the world knows about you through your actions. Supposing the boundary was not there and just the arrow was there? Where is the arrow going, inside or outside? You cannot say, because there is no inside and no outside if the pot is not there. In that case it is both. What this means that what goes inside, knowledge, is the same as that which goes outside, action. The fundamental equation Knowledge=Action (K=A) is valid only when the boundary is absent.
This means that you can create, you can manifest only when you get rid of your body awareness. As long as your consciousness is limited to your body awareness, there is no manifestation, and this equation is invalid, because you are able to distinguish K from A. When K becomes A you of necessity have to get rid of your body awareness. That is called the digambara state. That is where the siddhis manifest.
As long as you are aware of your body, as long as you are aware that you are clothed, as long as you are aware that you have an individual mind, as long as your individual thoughts are flowing through your individual mind, so long you do not have siddhi. Siddhi means the equation K=A. Just by thinking deeply you manifest. There is no distinction, there is no time gap, there is no interval between the thought and its creation. That is what we call manifestation. The necessary and sufficient condition for obtaining any siddhi of any kind is the loss of body awareness. This means we have to stop our mind from being agitated by external influences.
This is why in Devi you find the five senses which are the five arrows. These are the channels through which your mind can be disturbed. She holds them separate from the mind which is the bow. The bow and the five arrows, are indeed the mind and the five senses. She holds them separately. She does not connect the arrow to the bow, which means that Devi represents the yogic state where you decouple your mind from disturbing sensory inputs. But even when this mind is decoupled from the senses, there is still another part of the mind which is the memory. The memory contains in it all the senses and it keeps on bringing these things up. All those things also have to be decoupled. The mind itself has to go. It is then that you are flowing in the cosmic awareness.
The outer set of 10 triangles represent the five sensory and the five motor organs of the individual. As you are moving out from the Bindu of the Sri Chakra, you are moving farther and farther away from yourself, from being the cosmos to being an individual.
You can describe the explosion process of creation in terms of three stages: 1. explosion of the interface, the act of seeing which is connecting the inside with the outside manifesting the 8 triangles, 2. the explosion of the outer universemanifested in the inner 10 triangles, and 3. the explosion of the inner self, the egowhich is the outer 10 triangles of the Sri Chakra.
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