Guruji about nudity

Q: Why are there only women Goddesses, and why are some of them nude? Why are they all so similar?

Guruji: We Indians consider the life-giving energy of Nature, Prakṛti, as female. Nature is full of energies: some erotically enticing, some ferocious, some aesthetically peaceful. The Goddesses in this temple represent the harmonious energies of Nature which move a person from being human to being a divine personality.

What is the nature of divine beings?
To express love towards all beings and all life, irrespective of man-made caste, class, race, or country distinctions. Their love knows no bounds. It is all-pervasive.

This unconditional love pervading all of Nature is shown as the nudity of the icons here.

Nudity does not mean removing clothes alone. It also means removing all patterns of thinking that separate one person from another. It means getting rid of ideas like “these are my people” and “this is me” — in other words, the sense of I and mine, called ego. It means expanding one’s love to all people.

It may help to illustrate these ideas with a story from the Bhāgavatam.

Once, some divine nymphs were bathing nude in a lake. The hundred-year-old sage Vyāsa was passing by. They felt a sense of shame and covered their breasts with their hands.

After a little while, his son Śuka, a sixteen-year-old male, was passing by, totally nude and absorbed in Nature. They did not even notice him. They were playing and laughing.

Vyāsa noticed this and came back to them and asked:
“I am a hundred-year-old sage without any sexual passions. I was clothed. When I was passing, you felt shame. How come you did not feel shame when my son, exhibiting his nudity, was passing by? I do not understand this strange behaviour of yours.”

They replied:
“O venerable sage, we know your greatness. But when you were passing by, we felt that there was a human observer. When Śuka was passing, it was like a bird flying in the sky, like tree leaves rustling, like water flowing over our very bodies. We did not feel that there was anyone observing us. When there is no one else observing, and we are all by ourselves, how and why would we feel a sense of shame? Are we ashamed of ourselves?”

Vyāsa realised that he was not fully absorbed in his true nature; he still felt a separation from it.

The whole of Nature — and billions of living forms in it — are all nude. Only humans cover themselves with their shame.

When Adam ate the apple, he felt ashamed of his and Eve’s nudity. That was the original sin: being ashamed of nudity. Nudity itself was not sin. They were nude before eating the apple, and they were not sinful then.

Shakti: Tantric temple of nude goddesses

Dakshina Kalika vigraham in Devipuram temple

In this Temple, Kali is sitting on top of Siva. It means that Life is coupled to Time manifesting all that we see. All powers of Life are arranged around Her in the form of a sacred Sri Chakra.
All the lively powers you see here are latent in you. Your body is a temple. In it, every limb has some power. To expand the latent powers in your organs, you have to pay attention to them.
We are all born through the female genital. Life is manifesting primarily through it. Pay attention to it, adore it, worship it; the doors of all lives open up to you. Vemana became a Yogi by like that. He attained alchemic powers to change base metals to gold; meaning changing humans into Gods.
We were all protected and nourished by milk from Mother. These powers are called Sri Devi and Bhu Devi, located in the two breasts. Suprabhatam sings " Oh Vishnu! You worshipped Lakshmi's breasts with Kumkum, and got all powers to protect and nourish the world." You are Vishnu or Lakshmi when you were married. So you can also give or get such powers by receiving or doing it.
Face is where Saraswati resides. Worship Her smile, and She will shower all knowledge, and a firm resolve to you. Worshipping Mother's feet is the the surest way to get release from all bondages. Thus adoring the limbs of a woman give all attainments. This is Shakti tantra.
Tantra means technology. Tantra is the technique of worship which removes limits to what you can know or do. We hear, touch, see,taste, smell. These powers are all limited to our bodies, senses and intellect. We don't know what is happening elsewhere, or in the future. These limits are like clothes,
limiting our awareness; "you extend only upto this, no more". When a power is limited, we call it a Devi like for example, "Netra Devi" or "Astra Devi"; when unlimited, Shakti. Tantra uncovers, unleashes the power in a Devi, to convert Her into Energy, a Shakti. This uncovering is like
removing clothes. So we adore Devis clothed; Shaktis are necessarily nude.

Lajja Gauri

This is the secret of some nude icons here. Nudity is a saying, "I have nothing to hide, I am not ashamed, because you are a part of me." It is a symbol of unconditional love. Also it is detachment to others opinions, of self reference. "My happiness does not require your approval". It is a symbol of nature; all of nature is nude, except some civilised humans. It is a symbol of innocence, like in a child. Nudity is art.
So, nudity of icons here is not intended to disrespect women but to tell how to unconver limited consciousness.

Khajuraho Temple

In the cults of Mother Goddess all over the world, sex has been and will continue to be considered sacred, whether for enjoyment or for yoga. Wine, meat and sex are the common ways of pleasing Mother Goddess. On special festive days like valentines, sex orgies used to be offerred to Goddesses and Gods; we can see their relics on the sculptures showing them in temples. What has sex to do with temples? Every thing, says Tantra. Worship the genitals, as Siva lingam; the degrading influence of sadistic, angry, hurtful sex disappears. Sex ought to be coupled to sacredness instead of sin, like in olden days in temples. Why? Temples are places where evil influences are less likely, and desires have no chance for turbulence. Anger, neroses, and aggression diminish in society leading to peace.
Peace is godly; war is demonly.

So instead of condemning our tantric culture as uncivilised, let us rethink, see where we have gone wrong, and be willing to correct it if necessary. We enjoy variety in food, music, art and in science. Given the perception that we have one life to live, should we look down upon our curiosity which
seeks variety in sex? Why is there two billion dollar porno industry and the world's oldest trade, flesh trade? Should sex be denied even when it is an offering of self in love? Should ascetic continence be prescribed as the norm for every one? Give honest answers to these questions yourself, not worrying what others say about your answer.

Who are more civilised: nude tribes where sex related crimes are unknown or our clothed civilisation which makes us neurotically develop the sinful magic of total destruction of not only ourselves but our whole world of all living beings with weapons of mass destruction? Who gave us the right to destroy other forms of life enmass? Have we created them?
Energy is energy, it is the same. When in excretory organs, it manifests as fear; in genitals as desire for sex; in the navel as power; in the heart as love; in the throat as communication across distances; in eyes across time zones; in the crown as a spiritual fountain of wonder and delight. Like music, life plays these emotions. You have a choice, of where to play. Let us respect women. Not in theory but in practice. We only talk of advaita. Let us practice it. Let us be truly be guided by the dictum, "All is Brahman indeed" Let us alow conditions which move from aggression to love. That is the message of the nude Shaktis here.

Amrita

Astrology and the Environment

A discourse by Guruji Sri Amritananda Natha
May 2006, at Devipuram

You can change the future, but you cannot know it. You can know the past, but you cannot change it. The present is the interface between knowing and changing, between knowing and acting. The past is history, the future a mystery. The past is His-story and the future is Her-story. The future belongs to the Mother and the past belongs to the Father.

It would be nice to know the future. All fear is caused by not knowing what the future holds. So people try to dispel its mystery by various means, such as astrology. And astrology can sometimes be a convenient thing, too! Say somebody has made a marriage proposal to your daughter. You don’t like the match, but you don’t want to take the blame for rejecting it. So you say, “The stars are bad; what can we do?”

As a result, many people conclude that astrology is based on myth. And it seems like a pretty good conclusion, doesn’t it? Think about it: “What is your time of birth?” Well, what does that mean? Is it the time when the sperm meets the egg? Or is it when life occurs in the womb, which is the third month? Or is it when the head comes out of the womb? Or when the whole body comes out? Or when you cut the umbilical cord? What is the precise time of birth? Nobody specifies. What for? That’s why they call astrology a pseudo-science.

But if we understand that every human being has a life, and that every planet has a life, and that each life interacts somehow with all other lives and therefore exerts some influence – well, then we can begin to understand astrology. The solar system has a life. And within that living entity, each planet is influencing the system’s other entities in subtle ways that don’t depend upon distance. To understand these interactions, or to get the right intuition about them, you need to do sadhana. For sadhakas, astrology works 100 percent. For people who want to earn money, it’s all bunkum. There is a science and a non-science to astrology. And that is the difference between them.

So you do your sadhana. And once you realize that you are the Truth, what need have you to do more? Once you realize that all efforts take you away from yourself, then you can remove all the effort and just be what you are. What sadhana am I doing? I’m sitting and talking. I’m not doing japa. I’m not doing anything, just easing myself into a state of peace. That is what I’m doing.

Two Brahmas: Zero and Infinite

Guruji:

1. Dve brahma veditavye. Śūnyaṃ ca aśūnyaṃ ca.

Two types of Brahman are to be known: Zero and non-zero.

How did this phenomenal world of such great variety come into existence from nothing? That is the question we will ponder here.

Some say, there was Nāda, the primordial sound, from which everything has come into being. Nāda means a vibration. For vibration to exist, there must be something that is vibrating, and some space in which to vibrate. When nothing — Śūnya — was there, what vibrates in what space? Obviously, Nāda cannot be primordial. Bible says, “First there was the Word, and the Word was God.” I can’t make sense out of this.

How can anything come out of nothing? That is the fundamental question. Only nothing can come out of nothing. Here then is the clue: we ought to investigate the properties of nothing.

Zero, zero, zero. Can zero produce anything other than itself? How about, say, a pair? Well, it may be feasible. Hmm, let us see.

0 = 1 − 1
0 = 2 − 2
0 = 3 − 3
0 = 1.5 − 1.5

Looks like zero is very fertile in producing pairs. How about π − π? Why not? How about,

0 = x − x
0 = y − y
0 = z − z
0 = t − t

It looks like we can create “xyz” space and “t” time out of zero.

We have hit on the very clue to create a space-time interval, in which something can move — a vibration. Methinks, creation of space-time interval precedes the “word, the Nāda.” Physics tells us that space and time chasing each other creates matter, which is a vortex of space-time.

This pair — the subject and object, jñātṛ and jñāna, or mātṛ and meya — have to have an interval. So much space between what I see and me; so much time between the two of us. Together they constitute the triad, the tripuṭi, the tripurā: subject–object–interval. So, from zero the triad can come. Not two, but three. The object is the reflection of the subject in zero. It appears, zero is like the pinhole in the pinhole camera.

We have here the concept of the center, the source of all, the mother of cosmos, the yoni from which everything springs, the central triangle of Śrī Cakra. In its center is the bindu, the zero — a very fertile zero — the liṅga.

Śūnya, Aśūnya. What about that?

“A” means negation. Negating zero means something exists which is not zero.

After producing any large number of pairs equal and opposite, is the zero exhausted? No. It can produce more. You give me any number, however large. I will produce more pairs than that from the zero. This is exactly the concept of infinity — Aśūnya.

Both infinity and zero seem to have the same type of properties. They are both inexhaustible. One is smaller than the smallest; the other is larger than the largest.

You subtract infinity of all even numbers from all integers — infinity of all odd numbers remains. So infinity minus infinity is infinity. What about zero minus zero? Zero minus zero is zero.

Let us ask a few more questions. Is the central triangle of the Śrī Cakra equilateral? Is it completely symmetric?

The answer is no. Why?

I see myself in the mirror of my mind. I think I know what is happening in the mind of the mirror image. But wait a minute — there is a distance in time between me and my reflection. I can almost know, but not quite. What I can know depends on the time it takes for light to go to the mirror image and come back. So I can know what existed, but not what is currently going on.

It looks like my image is jaḍa, while I am caitanya. The interval is also creating the knowing and not-knowing. So there is an asymmetry preventing equilateral.

Now, pray who is going to decide whether I am real or my image is real? No one can, really. Any examples?

Well, if I stand on the sun, earth is going round me. On the contrary, if I am standing on the earth, the sun is going round me.

It looks like I am always the unchanging part — consciousness — and my image is always moving, changing consciousness. The “I” in me am always the unchanging awareness. Whatever I see or know is transient, limited in time, space, or matter.

Buddha called Brahman the Śūnya.
Hindus call it the Pūrṇa.

We are both talking of the same thing: the zero and infinite aspect of it. These are the two Brahmans that the sūtra talks about.

Spirituality is not dull and boring thing, it is Divine romance

Guru helps to connect to the power of the universe, i.e., Ādi Parā Śakti.
The function of any real Guru is to kill your ego first — die first — and then be reborn as the world. That is the algorithm. The Guru does that.

The connection to the circle and the dot is an empowering act, to becoming a winner.

In the history of every saint, they have gone through a transformation from their physical nature to astral nature.
If you take Ramana Maharshi, he enacted his death and was born spiritually.
Similarly Aurobindo wrote Savitri — the whole book is about the ascent and descent of Satyavan.
With Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, he did everything to kill his ego.

So the job of the Guru is to kill you — i.e., your concept of being only a physical entity.
You have body, mind, but you are not them.

The world is contained in you.

Job of the Guru is to tell you that you are an awakened being.
All you have to do is overcome limitations — that which binds you.

Spirituality is not a dull and boring thing.
It is Divine romance.
Loving all and being loved by all.

All the gopis (Krishna līlā) are modifications in our life.
Why do we love the world?
Because the world out there is your own impression.

The Guru tells you this.
You start experiencing that.

When you are improving, the world improves.
If you hate the world, the world hates you — it has no option.
It reflects you, since it is yourself.

If you move, the world moves.

If you have watched the movie Matrix, where a boy looks at a spoon — if he moves his head, the spoon also bends.
How does he manage?
The boy says there is no spoon there.
I am bending my mind, and the reflection of mind — i.e., the spoon — bends.

You have power to control destiny and make it as you want.
You can bend the world.

None of us makes the future alone.
All contribute to the future.

When you change, the world changes.

Leadership implies first committing to change in the way you want to.

When you understand that your ego is just a small, small part of the whole.

For Mahatma Gandhi, he had three enemies:

1. British rule of India

2. Attitude of Indians in depending blindly on karma theory

3. Considered himself as an enemy — i.e., one’s own ego

Buddha told Ananda his last message:
“Don’t be guided by anything other than you. Be self-referential. Be proactive. Be a light unto yourself.”
This was when Ananda asked in tears for a last message.

Essence of Śrīvidyā is in the four Mahāvākyas — principles of Vedānta.

Vedānta says:
Yes, you are the world. The world is śūnya.

Tantra says:
You are the world. The world has power.
As long as you control Māyā, you can manifest power.

Bringing the conceptualization of universal principles into human realms is possible.

Prepare — Before the House Gets on Fire!

Prepare!
before the house gets on fire…

What is nectar? Food eaten when really hungry.
What is the best bed? Hard floor after hard work.
What is an impenetrable fort? Detachment from desires.
What is sex? Enjoying beauty and play.

What is darkness? Absence of light.
What is ignorance? Absence of knowledge.
What is hatred, immorality, corruption? Lack of love.

Why should I love others?
Because it is one solution to many problems.

Love prevents me from hurting my lover.
I can remain calm without anger or thoughts of revenge.
I can forgive my enemies.
I can even forget me, mine and others.
I can love myself.
I can love everyone as well as I love my family members.

Then the world I experience becomes my loving family.

Our world will change drastically if everyone loves everyone.
There can be no poverty, or hunger or hoarding because we love to share whatever we have.
There can be no corruption because we are not seeking personal gains.
There will be no need for defense because there can be no wars.

Ask these questions to a blade of grass.
Listen to the answers you get:

1. What is your name?
   What is a name?

2. What is the purpose of my living?
   To move happily.

3. How can I have better food?
   Food comes to me by itself.

4. Better sex?
   What is sex?

5. Better enjoyment?
   What is enjoyment? Isn’t life a joy?

6. How can I make more money?
   Water is my money.

7. Otherwise how will I fulfill such desires?
   Why do you need anything else?

8. Who will support me?
   I don’t know, but it comes wherever I am.
   I can’t move.

9. How can I live after my death?
   What is death?

The answers will work for you too.

Who are my guides? What do they teach me?

1. Toothpick — remove impurities in me.

2. Rubber band — extend without breaking down when problems confront me.

3. Band-aid — heal wounds made by others immediately, without suffering or developing hatred.

4. Eraser — erase mistakes I do. I should not criticize others who make mistakes like me.

5. Pencil — write the names and blessings I received from others.

6. Gemclip — keep us together without getting disorderly.

7. Teabag — give away all to the hot water, the lives of people around me.

How did one gram of a seed planted in 20 kilos of mud make 100 kilos of pumpkins?
If you know, then you know that there is a great intelligence in the seed, mud and water.

That intelligence shows:
the big can come out of the small.
the world can come out of you.

How can you know that the world came out of you?
You can see or know only if you have consciousness.

What is consciousness?
It is the mirror reflecting you to yourself.

Because you are the world, you see the world.
When you stop seeing the world as different from you, and know that you are all,
then you know that you can make the world you want,
that you have a free will like God,
that destiny is what you can create.

You also know that you are the only person to consult when a decision is to be made.
That makes deciding an extremely simple process.

“I was good all my life. Why did I not get a ticket to go on a luxury ship?”
There is a ring of protection around you because you were good.
The ship’s name was Titanic.

A few take almost everything; all the rest take the remaining little.

Examples:
The human DNA takes everything; all the rest take a little.
Mass production takes everything; production by masses only a little.
Nuclear weapons can kill all; fist fights only some.
A few who get attention through media can displace hundreds of thousands who cannot.
A large dose of nonlinear luck makes a box-office movie; it promotes big money for a small number of actors, displacing others who may have more talent.
The movies and the team together make the actor, not the other way round.

Inequity comes when someone marginally better or in a position of power grabs the whole pie.
The gurus who go on the media grab all the attention; the silent yogis none.
Media can level a playing ground, but more often it creates unjust slopes.

— Sri Amritananda Natha Saraswathi

Harmonizing with the environment

A discourse by Guruji Sri Amritananda Natha
May 2006, at Devipuram

To live in these aggregates – to live in your environment – requires both cooperation and a competitive spirit. Competitiveness enhances our quality of life; so does cooperation – but they are still opposing forces. How much competitiveness is appropriate and how much cooperation is a balance that each society strikes in its own way: A capitalist society defines it in one way, a communist society in another; and a religious institution will define it in yet a third way. There are different degrees of balance required, depending upon each given setup or context. Moreover, what is right for one person at one point of time is wrong for another person at another point of time: In the U.S.A., it’s often wrong if you’re not dating; in India, it’s often wrong if you are.

So how do we harmonize our own personal values with those of the environment in which we must function? Must we sometimes forsake our personal values? Should we forsake them here and there, now and then, or should we not?

Let’s look at the example of an orchestral musical composition. There is harmony in the music because the conductor tells the individual musicians in the orchestra, “Okay, now you play the violin at this octave, and you play the cymbals at this frequency,” and so on. And in order to achieve harmony, the musicians follow the conductor’s orders. In other words, we might say, they suppress their individual freedom to some extent – because if they were all to simply do their own thing, it would spoil the harmony. Similarly, for the sake of maintaining harmony in the aggregate life of our society, we are expected to follow certain rules and regulations – though the dynamic of following them is necessarily a suppression of our individual freedom.

In the world of business, to be frank, profitable trade usually depends upon someone cheating somebody else: “Vyaparo dhroha chintanam.” You have to give something less than what you get in order to make a profit, and profit is the supreme goal of business. Thus, corruption – in the sense of illegitimate earning – is necessarily part of the corporate ethic. In the same way, at any given moment, there are certain cells within you that represent chaos and disease, and others that represent order and maintenance. There is a war constantly ongoing between these two. Sometimes the protective white cells die; sometimes the invaders die; it’s is a matter of life and death for the cells involved. Similarly, a company’s ethics represent the aggregate life of the corporate entity, whereas the personal ethics of an individual employee within that entity represent the life of the self. And these interests do diverge sometimes. They too can be at war.
Because it is a clash of values. An honest man in a corrupt society is a misfit: Either he becomes corrupt as well, or he perishes. That’s just the way things are. Say, for example, that you need to get a government official’s approval for some project and he lets you understand that a little money under the table will help make things happen. It’s called “expediting money.” Not corruption, of course.

What should you do? You’ve got to weigh the consequences – sometimes they’re in your favor and sometimes not. And then you make a decision.

Which decision? I’ll just say this: Peace of mind loses the battle when making money becomes the goal. People believe that money and the power are the means to achieving peace of mind. Then once they’ve accumulated these “means,” they reason that since they can get peace of mind eventually anyway, why worry about it today? So it doesn’t work – at the end of the day, you’ve got to ask yourself, “Look, do I want peace of mind? Or do I want power and money, which are the means to peace of mind?” If you choose the means, you forfeit the end: That’s the clash that exists.

You see, what’s wrong with the present paradigm is the equation that people make between possessions and happiness: The more you have, the happier you are, right? But that equation is valid only to certain extent: If you have a comfortable, air-conditioned house, what does it matter if that house has 60 rooms? You can only sleep in one of them. They say Bill Gates has a house with 120 rooms! But how many rooms can he live in?

What you enjoy is your wealth – what you don’t enjoy really isn’t yours at all. So this proportionality between possessions and peace flattens everything out. If I visit my friend’s home for the night and he gives me the master bedroom to sleep in, then it’s my house for the time I’m there. If you just let go of the concept of ownership, then all the houses in the world are yours. The concepts of “I” and “mine” are the problems.
The problem people have is failing to distinguish the point at which their wants and means are in proportion with one another. Because once you’ve crossed that equilibrium, it makes no difference whatsoever whether you have one million or 100 millions. Once you realize this truth, you’re free to say, “I’ve got enough. I don’t have to bend to anyone.”