Kali

First, what is Kali? What path is Kali? Kali is power of action. Kali is the electromagnetic energy, which extends over all space.

Radiation is the means available for one particle at one place and time to know about the existence of another particle at another place and another time. Radiation interacts with matter, and their interaction impacts on the material system. It is interaction, made possible through radiation, which creates time.

Interaction is a fundamental thing. It is like the shyness of a bride. When the groom looks at the bride, she blushes. The look is the probe, the blush is the reaction. The probe and the reaction together constitute the interaction. For this reason, Kali is related to shame; She is shown in pictures as a naked woman, a shameless creature. The idea of the symbol is that She eliminates interactions which create duality. Lack of interactions is death.

Nakedness has this meaning, that space is your clothing. Yes, space is the clothing in which energy is concealed. Energy transforms matter's position and creates time. So Kāla, the time symbolized by the all-pervasive, eternal Śivaliṅga, is in fact a creation of Kali, the energy. This is one reason why Śiva is shown as a corpse lying flat under Her feet.

The difference between energy and matter is the following. Energy is dynamic, matter is static. Energy is unbottled matter, matter is bottled-up energy. Energy moves, probing the matter into motion. Matter is energy at rest, or rest energy. So Kali is shown as the active member on top of Śiva.

People say that time transforms things. Time does not do anything. Interactions transform and create time in the process.

Time is not absolute, space is not absolute. Through motion, they can be exchanged. Through interactions, even the direction of time can be reversed. The rate at which time flows can be changed by motion itself; or, energy controls the rate of flow of time. The more energetic a particle, the slower time moves for it.

Density is a property that is related to the proximity in time of a certain material object to the present. If you move an object away in time from the present, it dematerializes. If you bring an object into the present, it materializes.

The secret behind materialization is the ability to move in time — into the past and into the future. This is granted by the power of Kali. Kali is manifest as the power of Kuṇḍalinī in the body. She is experienced as a thunderbolt, as an explosion inside. This kind of a first experience occurs when the ego consisting of identification with the body is destroyed. Kali represents power over time, conquering time.

The power of transformation not only destroys but also creates. Kali, the power creating time, has destroyed many a galaxy, sending them away into the past. The garland of heads Kali wears is a symbol to remind us of the destructive aspect of time. The destructive aspect is also known as Śiva Tāṇḍava, or the dance of time — this is the dance of matter-energy exchanges — a cosmic hydrogen bomb.

It is not possible to enjoy the spectacle of death, devastating cosmic fire engulfing all known things and knowledge itself, unless there is utter detachment. It is only given to Śiva, the great detachment personified, to observe with dispassion his own destruction, the stoppage of time. Kali teaches such dispassion, utter vairāgya. Kali spares no saint, She spares no sinner. To Her, saint and sinner are the same. It is only the limited human intellect which tends to see God the good and refuses to see God the evil. Kali is not concerned with such limitations, because She knows better.

Kali knows that the universe is nothing more than a thought in the mind of God. Just as one does not weep when one thought is replaced by another, so She is not bothered in the least by one thought being replaced by another in the cosmic mind. She is the driving force chasing away one thought and bringing in another, because Kuṇḍalinī is the power of consciousness. She has mothered time, and She has no compunctions about destroying time itself, when She wants to give the taste of Samādhi to Her worshipper.

Kali, the power of transformation, reminds us about Her being purely sāttvic in character by the symbol of a head, cut off by Her sword and blessed profusely. Blood is a symbol for rajas.

Bleeding head is thus a symbol for the rajas going out of the thought patterns; thoughts are commonly located in the head; and flow is the characteristic of thought. Also the head is considered to be the site of jñāna, or knowledge. So the symbol of the bleeding head suggests a state of perfect knowledge, free from attachment to body and activity, death-like in Samādhi. The head is a living head. How can it die when held by Kali?

The symbolism of Kali does not stop with destruction. She is also the supreme Creator. Killing the present by sending it into the past is the first aspect. The second aspect is that of making the unmanifest future become the manifest present. The second aspect is the creative aspect. She is ever creative. Because the future is unmanifest, unknown, poetically it has been called the dark one. That is why Kali is supposed to be dark in color, of the color of sky, blue unmanifest; future contained hope, cure for miseries. So blue is the healing color.

The creative aspect of Kali is also symbolized. In one hand She holds the “fear not” posture and in the other “I bless you” posture. The “fear not” is to remind you that the universe is just a passing chimera of a thought, and that it is your thought, and you are God, you are immortal, and you are not going to end with the physical body. Nor is there any worry if your relatives, near and dear ones die. For, are they not your thoughts as well? The blessing is to remind you that you are beyond time, Her creation. That you persist beyond space and time. That you are going to create fresh relatives, fresh worlds through Her. She is the lusty female, hungry for sex. She is worshipped through reverse coitus. Of this, more later.

Kali is raw power (the living veritable tigress when She catches hold of you) representing on the one hand Thanatos, the death instinct, and on the other irrepressible Eros. She represents the burning head of desire plus the detachment of the burial ground.

These are Her two poles; She is the bipolar entity, the unity of opposites. And the world manifests in the separation of Kali and Kāla; it disappears in their union.

Kālī prefers union representing the dissolved state, the Nivṛtti-mārga. Thus She is the first one to be worshipped by the aspirant as She gives vairāgya so easily. Kālī is worshipped in two forms: as Saṃhāra Kālī, and as Dakṣiṇā Kālī, referring to the dissolved and manifest states. As Saṃhāra Kālī She gives death and liberation; as Dakṣiṇā Kālī She gives enjoyment while living and liberation on death. Dakṣiṇā Kālī is inviting you to mate with Her; when you do so, She becomes Saṃhāra Kālī. She is māyā; dissolution of māyā leads to mahāsamādhi from which there is no return. This is the reason why it is insisted that you treat Kali as your mother; then the thought of enjoying Her does not arise that easily in the head, preserving your life. But think! what better way to die than in the hands of mother, to become Śiva, a death-like corpse? If you are Her child, She feeds you with milk from Her ever-full breasts; and the milk of life is sweet indeed. In the total recognition, there is no second, one does indeed become Śiva and Śakti in union; then there is no manifest world, except the continuous unending bliss. And one who has once tasted the sweetness of it wants to come back, except as a sacrifice of freedom brought about willfully!

Mantra of Dakṣiṇā Kālī is:

Krīm Krīm Krīm hūm hūm hrīm hrīm Dakṣiṇe Kālīke
Krīm Krīm Krīm hūm hūm hrīm hrīm svāhā

The mental associations which go with the mantra are the following. Krīm is the bīja of fire, coupled with the bīja of k of Manmatha, coupled with rīm, the act of seeing. So Krīm represents the overpowering fire of lust, kāmāgni. The bīja hūm is the Śiva bīja, rī is Viṣṇu. This is known as Kūrcha, by which the kāmāgni is aroused. Hrīm is the forceful thrust of Śiva, the probe which wants to measure the depth of consciousness. The three Krīm bījas arouse fire in the three planes: on the physical, lust; on the mental, the desire to know; on the causal, anger with physical manifestations, vairāgya. The hrīm repeated twice is the surge and ebb of life, throb felt at the tip of the male generative organ in full erection. Hrīm is the echoing, reacting, cooling response of the female to the thrusts. It is cooling because in hrīm, H stands for space, and the fire in space is amṛta; because egoless state is space-like and therefore not subject to passions. Bhuvaneśvarī as Sudhā responds to the fire of Śiva by liquid fire which is cooling. The word Dakṣiṇā is used so as to remind one of the region to the south of the body, the sex center. There is another meaning to Dakṣiṇā. After Pārvatī extracts the Svatantra Tantra, the Sundarī upāsanā from Śiva, Śiva asks Her to give his Guru-dakṣiṇā. The all-knowing Pārvatī blushes at the implication, and as is proper offers herself totally to Śiva’s embrace, hence She came to be known as Dakṣiṇā Kālīkā. Upāsanā of Dakṣiṇā Kālīkā leads to a permanent realization of the Ardha-Nāreśvara form in the genital centre. If done with vairāgya it leads to unending bliss called ūrdhvaretaḥ.

The connection between Kali and Sundarī upāsanās is very intimate indeed. The same deity is known as Kali during the dark half of the month and as Sundarī in the bright half of the month, referring to the nivṛtti and pravṛtti paths.

Apart from the fact that the worship is to be done at the Ājñā centre, and IM is the most secret symbol leading to liberating dissolution called mahāsamādhi, no further explanations will be offered here about Saṃhāra Kālī. Already too much has been said about Her.

In Kali, death and life are in union. She is the hooded Kuṇḍalinī cobra, the serpent power, ready to strike at the Ājñā centre — if you give her permission to do so, she will complete the act to mutual satisfaction!

Kali is the combined life force in the world. The vitality flowing in all bodies is Kuṇḍalinī. She joins with the breath to become the power of action in an individual. Breath is not life, although the same word prāṇa is used for both. The movement of life force, vitality, opposes the movements of breath. When breath is going down, life is surging up; when breath is going out, life is surging in. To arouse Kuṇḍalinī, one has to imagine that the breath is going and hitting at the Mūlādhāra centre, coupled with Śakti-calana-mudrā.

Now what is this Mūlādhāra centre? It is located between the anus and the base of the penis in man; it is the ejaculatory sphincter muscle. Śakti-calana-mudrā is the contraction of this muscle while breathing in, and relaxing it while breathing out. These alternate contractions and relaxations will soon have a penile reaction as an erection. This erection is symbolically described as: “Take a stick and hit the tail of the sleeping serpent. It will open its hood and rise with a hissing sound.”

Once the erection is obtained one maintains a steady contraction of the ejaculatory sphincter, with occasional relaxations. At the same time the mind is turned to a state of happiness, remembering the orgasmic release. Control is exercised with sufficient detachment to prevent a physical release. One-pointed stay at the peak is practised. Then a strange thing happens. The erection subsides. The mind gets calm, the “kundalini enters the hole on the head of the liṅga in its upward journey.” This is the Suṣumṇā canals, of freedom from desire.

Instead of individually, it is really best to practice for the husband and wife together, in union. After coupling, the partners ease themselves into an easy posture where no bodily tensions or weights are present, and one starts off on the breath-muscle movement–mantra rhythm with no external movements. Āsana implies no external movements. Mentally, the bodies are agile; they can move as much as they want, do what they want. When a couple does sādhana, it is best to say the mantra loud, with each bīja alternately told by one and the other partner. This synchronises the breath-mantra life currents automatically. When each one learns the other's life current, mantra can be synchronised to that, rather than saying it aloud.

When the bīja is spoken out by the husband, his life goes in. At that time, the wife is listening, preparing to utter the same bīja, so she is taking her breath in, and her life current is moving up. So, the life current moves from the husband to the wife through the genital coupling when the husband is speaking, and moves from the wife to the husband when the wife is speaking.

The situation is illustrated symbolically by the two figures below and described in table.

It is clear that by alternately saying the same bīja by husband and wife, or by a single person saying and listening mentally, the Kuṇḍalinī or life force starts moving like a pendulum, increasing amplitude as japa proceeds, and a complete circle is formed uniting the two completely.

The next figure here illustrates the differences in the Locations of the muladhar and svadhisthan centres in the male and female. In the female, svadhistham is the clitoris, muladhar is deep inside vagina.

In the male,

svadhistham is at the base of the penis, in contact with vulva; it is a ring around the base of the linga. Sakti calane is shown in the picture.

It should be remembered that Kuṇḍalinī is associated with sex. Sex is a part of Kuṇḍalinī, not the whole of it. In the lower centres, it does represent the vital force of sex. When one goes beyond this, when desire subsides, when mental body shakes loose of the physical body, one enters the Maṇipūra and Anāhata centres, when body consciousness is gone. There Kuṇḍalinī represents the affectionate love of the sustaining mother to the whole world.

Dakṣiṇā Kālī’s job is to make the Kuṇḍalinī move in the central channel. This is done by simulating her nature; utter vairāgya coupled with utter desire of creativity. In between the searching fire and the deadening cold lies warm path of the Sun, the Suṣumṇā canal of sublimated sex drive.

Vasiṣṭha has dismissed the whole subject with the following brief explanation: “Kali upāsanā is done at Svādhiṣṭhāna, because she is kriyā-śakti, the power of action. The vital power of individuals is lost by lack of control over breathing, and short breath cycles. To improve the life energy, one has to understand the nature of ‘rasa’; knowing awareness of all implications of breathing is the pure form of upāsanā of Kali.”

What this “rasa” is, what is the knowledge of breathing, what are the implications; some of these aspects we have dealt with above. The “rasa” is the bliss of orgasm; the knowledge is the connection between mantra, breathing, and Kuṇḍalinī movements in the Svādhiṣṭhāna centre. The implications are the upward movements, and the consequences arising thereof. This is the pure form of upāsanā of Kali, which can be done alone, or with the help of a co-operating partner.

Vasiṣṭha continues: “Aware breathing has great mahimā; it is one of the eight siddhis, control over time, knowledge of past or present. It gives power to the mind, to the speech, to the eye, long life. Also, it liberates.”

Power of the speech means vākśuddhi — or whatever one speaks becomes true. Control over time has already been referred to. Knowing the past lives and future removes the fear of death once and for all; the power of materialisation is implied in the power over time. Power to the mind means the ability to dig deep into the divine nature and get knowledge within oneself. Power to the eye means the ability to see into distance, into time. Liberation means eliminating the ego-creating shackles.

Vasiṣṭha says: “This is sung as Saṃvarga-vidyā — or the vidyā relating to the mind (sam = mind, varga = relating to; sam also means śakti). Kali is also known as Prāṇa-vidyā. In the Upaniṣads it is called Udgītha-vidyā. To the materialistically oriented people, she appears to be the sword which hits them. For the Yogis she is the sword in their hands.

The sword in their hands — how apt! If what you say becomes true, you can use it to destroy as well as create with it. How important then is the self-control of the yogi not to exercise the power for evil! Siddhis are dangerous to have, so beware!