USCP (1998): The Kalās of the Moon; Kāma Kalā; Haṁsaḥ and Aṅgadevatā Pūjās

The Kalās of the Moon — Sixteen Digits of the Moon

When we invoke the kalās of the moon, the moon’s mantra is recited at the top of the head. Devī’s face is supposed to be like the moon, full round, and the moon represents the flow of time around the Viśuddhi chakra. You go around the Viśuddhi clockwise. You begin the mantra by saying “Soma-maṇḍalāya ṣoḍaśa-kalātmane viśeṣārghya amṛtāya namaḥ” — “I pay my respects to that special fluid which is the nectar”.

The mantra for the Moon and the amṛt is:

Āpyāyasva sam etu te viśvataḥ soma-vṛṣṇiyaṁ bhava vājasya saṅgadhe,
Sam sim sum saim saum saḥ samala varayum soma-maṇḍalāya namaḥ.

— “Please come and drench me all over the world; raining nectar; the saṁsāra of this world; vāja is the horse, the symbol of our limbs of action; saṅgadhe — for their fulfillment please come and rain this nectar on me fulfilling all my desires and therefore annihilating my desires”.

So we invoke the moon for actions fulfilling all our desires. Sam saḥ is from one extreme to the other extreme of the seed.

When you move your awareness through the letters you trace a path. In the guru mantra and in these bījas you have to trace the path of the Kuṇḍalinī through your body. You must be very familiar with the Mātṛkā Nyāsa, the Sanskrit letters and where they are on your body. It is a very concentrated flow of awareness with a story behind it. It is called Pratyāhāra. What you are trying to do is withdrawal of the senses and to be concentrated on what you are doing.

We then invoke the sixteen digits of the moon. We pour the milk and imagine that into the milk the pattern of the Viśuddhi is there. And we go around the milk and invoke the digits of the moon, four in each quadrant of the cup. You go in a clockwise fashion. The first one is considered as Amāvasyā. It is very sacred. That is when all the kalās of the moon have gone back to the sun. The union of the sun and moon is complete in Amāvasyā. That is when the Suṣumṇā channel is active. Passion and vairāgya are completely united. That is when the Kuṇḍalinī flows through the central channel. The Devī is completely in union with Śiva on Amāvasyā. She is called Kālī. During Pūrṇimā, full moon, Devī is completely separate. She is Lalitā then.

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Haṁsaḥ and Aṅgadevatā Pūjās of Śrī Sudhā Devī

We have invoked the kalās of the sun, the fire, and the moon and we have created this lunar eclipse time artificially here. Now we have to invoke in the viśeṣārghya the 51 letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. We draw a triangle imagining that it has been written with these letters. From the bottom point you go upward with the vowels.

Am am im im um um arum arum alum alum em aim om aum am ahm.

Then there are three groups of five and one consonants:

ka, kha, ga, gha, na,
ca, cha, ja, jha, na,
ta, tha, da, dha, na,
then ta.

Then starting with:

tham dam dham nam pam pham bam bham mam yam ram lam vam sam sam and sam.

Then:

ham, lam, kṣam — the three eyes in the three corners of the triangle. You are going anticlockwise in the Ājñā chakra.

Having done that you invoke the kāma kalā into the milk. The face is represented by a circle, the heart center by two circles, and the yoni by a triangle.

This is called the Kāma Kalā. This has several meanings. The face is a circle which represents śūnya — nothing. Negation of everything. This is am. Ha is the visarga. Sarga means creation; visarga means extreme creativity. This is represented by the two circles, the two breasts.

In the agni kalāvāhana we have omitted one letter. We omitted “m”. It stands for contact. Contact is so important for Devī that it is incorporated in all the these bīja letters. We don’t say “a”; we say “am”. We don’t have to say the “m” separately. The ma is represented by the yoni, the contact between Śiva and Śakti.

Aham. When you are coming down from the head to the bottom you say aham — I am. When you go up you say maha. I am the cosmos. So the aham means I am the Devī. Ahamsah. I am the Devī, the entire cosmos. So when you say ahamsah, I am the Devī in the Kāma Kalā you are equating the process of coming down and going up. There is no distinction.

With the incoming breaths you are working with the I. With the outgoing breaths you can go through different surfaces, different individuals or objects. The breath goes in a circular process, never repeating the same cycle. So with the incoming breath you are “I am the Devī, the universe”; with the outgoing breaths you go through all of the living beings one by one. It is the individual experience and the cosmic experience. What is the difference? Individual experience is the serialization of the cosmic experience. The cosmic experience is the unitive experiences of the individual experience. That means whereas in the individual experience you have to go through serially one by one all the life forms in this world at all times in the world; but in the cosmic experience you experience the lifeforms of all the living beings at the same time and in one lifetime you have finished the whole thing.

Between these two the time factor is much more in the individual experience. In the cosmic experience you can experience mokṣa much faster. It is the viśvarūpa darśanam of the Bhagavad Gītā. Kṛṣṇa shows Arjuna his cosmic form but still time is flowing. You see through the Ājñā chakra, so time is still there and distinctions are still there — the mouths, the eyes, of each living being flowing from the mouth of Kṛṣṇa. It is not a complete experience. It is a partial experience. It is close to the Sahasra, but it is not the Sahasrāra. The Sahasrāra cannot be described.

You draw the kāma kalā into the milk of the viśeṣārghya: the face saying “A” the breasts saying “Ham” and the yoni saying “Sah”. The face is Ka E I La Hrīṁ; the breasts are Ha Sa Ka Ha La Hrīṁ and the yoni is Sa Ka La Hrīṁ. The Ājñā center triangle that we have drawn with all the letters also includes all the other chakras as well.

Then we draw a hexagon surrounding this triangle and a circle inside it while saying the Amṛta Jaya mantra “Om Haum jumsah”. The hexagon represents the union between Śiva and Śakti and the circle inside it is the bindu which comes out of this union. Then we worship the Devī here in the viśeṣārghya with the Aṅgadevatā Nyāsa.

We invoke the different chakras into the milk. We identify that the Devī’s Mūlādhāra chakra representing all the earth and the solid state is invoked into the viśeṣārghya maṇḍala. The solid state is the square. We invoke all the oceans and liquids into the Svādhiṣṭhāna chakra, the six-sided star. We invoke the fire in the Maṇipūra, the air in the Anāhata, the prāṇa and space into the Viśuddhi into the maṇḍala’s circle.