Typed Manuscript
(An incomplete commentary on the Lalitā Sahasranāma)
1. Śrīmātā
The Mother of auspiciousness, the measure of prosperity, the womb of Lakṣmī. Mātā means Mother; She is the Mother of everything. Thus, She is the daughter, sister, mother and friend of everyone. The womb measures the size of the child. The child is the Universe. Consciousness is the womb. Out of consciousness has come this universe.
Sādhana (Practice)
She is worshipped at the Mūlādhāra, as Kālī, the womb, with the notion that it is the source of life, creativity, bliss, ānanda. The worship should be done without arousal of lust by the worshipper. Kālī is the dark, naked goddess—darkness symbolizing unmanifestness, and nakedness implying space coverings. The unmanifest is the womb of the manifest—worlds.
2. Śrīmahārājñī
Auspicious Empress.
An Empress, Supreme, has the complete power and the pride and arrogance of the entire power of the Cosmos. This power, however, is auspicious; so it is benevolent, guiding and aiding evolution towards higher, ever more blissful state of the world. Pride and ego refer to ahaṃkāra of the individual ego. First, She is Consciousness, then She is the ego.
Sādhana
When ego is de-personalized, Aham (the word for ego) becomes Mahā (the word for Cosmos), the individual attains to the state of Godhood. The rajas energy should be directed towards elimination of the ego, or transforming it into the universal ego of God.
Ego is the personality, vibrating as the sense of “I” in every individual. It consists of the following eight ideas, which act as bondages:
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Hate
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Doubt
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Fear
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Shame
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Aversion
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Culture
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Class
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Conformity
Each of these ideas tend to bind one, all the time making the aspirants look only to the past to determine the course of his future, remembering and planning. These are the barriers to detachment (vairāgya), the essential condition for liberation. All these bondages retard the advancement of the individual towards realization of the identity of oneself with God.
The consequence of these bondages is that man is forever subject to behavior conditioned by inertia of the past, and forever misses God realization (Brahman) in the present. Careful analysis shows that all these notions flow from ideas of duality, of distinction of oneself from what one sees. In reality, all notions of duality are flowers of the tree of consciousness. Consciousness—“I” awareness—is the only entity there is.
Forgetfulness of the fact that awareness as “I” is seeing awareness as the world by projecting the world out of itself constantly deludes one into notions of duality.
Consequences of duality notions are that man constantly is agitated by:
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lust
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anger
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greed
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attachment
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pride or arrogance
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envy
Further, even more troublesome consequences are fear and death.
The only way to overcome all these internal foes is to recognize once and for all that all these are ideas; so they can be substituted by counter-ideas. If one does this, one gets emancipated from the sense of personality and death, and achieves mahat, or the greatness of God.
One must do everything in one's power to reduce the hold of the ideas of hate, doubt, etc., enumerated above, by seeing:
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God in oneself, and
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the same God Consciousness in all that one sees without exception—in the lowly as in the most exalted; in the disciple as well as in the Guru; in friend and in foe; in conscious beings and in apparently unconscious entities including space, time and matter.
If Aham is used as a mantra, it oscillates between Aham and Mahā; one is both oneself and the world. So in meditation, one is improving oneself; it follows that one is improving the world also simultaneously. Good does not consist in merely good actions; good thoughts are also good actions. Because in reality there is no distinction between thoughts and actions. There are no actions as such; only thoughts of actions have any temporary reality.
Consciousness is the greatest power. She is the Supreme Empress; because out of it all worlds proceed, She is the womb of the world, and into it they subside. All actions of all the worlds are manifestations of consciousness; since actions are the root of notions of power, the power of consciousness is the highest power. It is the light of lights; it is the light by which all lights are seen; it is the invisible light that is known but not seen by everyone. It is the seer, the seen, and the bliss of seeing also. What else is there besides it?
Aham means contact with all the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet from ‘a’ to ‘ha’, because ‘m’ means contact with, according to the Śiva Sūtras. As one proceeds from ‘a’ to ‘ha’, evolution of the cosmic to the individual self is proceeding. Evolution from the cosmic to the individual ego, the characteristic or liṅga, or the Śiva is born. From the mother to the child, the route is from ‘a’ to ‘ha’; from child to the mother the route is from ‘ha’ to ‘a’.
The letters ‘a’ to ‘ha’ each have a place in the body, called the Mātṛkā Sarasvatī Nyāsa. By moving the awareness over these places one contacts Sarasvatī, the Mother of all. When one follows the order ‘a’ to ‘ha’, ego sense is strengthened; when the reverse order is placed in the body, identity with the Mother, the Supreme Empress, is obtained in Nirvikalpa Samādhi, which is complete knowledge—knower and the known together.
3. Śrīmatsiṁhāsaneśvarī
Lalitā rides on a lion; She is auspicious. Siṁha means a lion. When it is used as an āsana, or carrier or mantra, the word takes on different forms.
As siṁha the lion, it is rajasic—action and power-oriented. Siṁha becomes hiṁsā, meaning violence. In the violent form, the upāsanā is tamasic, destructive. A minor twist to siṁha makes it haṁsī, the female swan. The swan is a symbol of tranquility, the stillness of the lake of mind. It is also a symbol of discrimination, since haṁsa, the legendary bird, is capable of separating milk from water—that is, reality from illusion.
In the form of haṁsī, the mantra is the carrier of Sarasvatī; it becomes sattvic upāsanā, enjoyment-oriented. This is so because Sarasvatī is the creatrix, and all forms of creativity—physical, mental or causal—entail supreme joy. Haṁsaḥ also means aham saḥ, meaning the knowledge that “I am that which I see.”
Even if the upāsanā did start in the tamasic form of killing animals as a sacrifice to Devī, it evolves through Her grace soon into killing one's own internal animals of greed, anger, illusion, pride, envy, fear, etc. Further evolution goes on through the rajasic forms of trying to do good to the world by acquiring power and control over all men, women and the elements; then through the sattvic forms of spreading love, affection, knowledge and discrimination; of worship of sensual bliss as a divine expression; of joy of self-giving to others, in what is known as Śrī Cakra.
Then comes equilibrium between the three higher forms of upāsanā: eliminating internal enemies, acquiring power, and universal love. Finally, even these higher forms of upāsanā are reduced, to simply being the God that one is, in the permanent bliss of self-knowledge.
Then one rides the lion.
One has controlled the lion.
One is Lalitā.
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