Lalitha in India

In Hindu culture, Goddess Lalitha occupies the top most place. She is the embodiment of power,
grace, beauty and voluptuousness. She is the archetype of "free woman", the empress of the
world, the mother of the Trinity Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. She rides on Siva the male principle,
and a lion, the king of beasts. She gives abundant pleasure, procreating children and so is
revered as the goddess of fertility.

Even more important, Lalitha is the Goddess preventing the cycle of births and deaths giving
moksha. If you are born, you must die. If you are not born, you can't die. It is as simple as that. In
this role, she is the Goddess of birth control, the preventer of birth to overcome death, offering the
human seed into the fire of navel chakra (through mudras and bandhas, processes of yoga) or
into an external vedic/tantric fire in purna-ahuti meaning full offering of self (seed of self which
causes rebirth) . Even in this role, she is promoting pleasure, offering human seeds for creating a
world that we want.

Lalitha is both light and shade, day and night, sun and moon, and also the middle zone of twilight.
During day, she is revered as Gayatri, the power of life streaming from the Sun. During night, She
is revered as the healing power of Moon called kama-kala, the art of love. Love and love-making
are both healing. Kamakala also means yoga. During twilight transitions, she is worshipped as
Fire of creation.

Her energies are encoded secretly into Sri Chakra; which is both an abstract geometry of
stunning geometrical beauty as well the physical union of 9 to 108 adept couples in a Chakra
formation seeking control over the grip of time and overcoming causality creating samsara, the
cycle of birth and death. She is the very definition of quantum model; which says that the
objective world we see is our own creation. This power of creating the world of perceptions is
called Maya.

Thus Hindu culture adores every woman- a little girl(kumari), budding teen(baala/shodasi), adult
woman(sundari/suvasini), or an old crone(wisdom goddess) all equally for being a female and a
mother. She has given us life. Nothing has any value, if life is not there. Life is the highest gift of
the mother. In Her womb, we have been made, we sucked life giving fluids from her breasts, she
sang lullabies of love extolling us as Gods. As an adult woman, she gives us sensual enjoyment
and our children we bond to. She is liberated, she directs our life, and is on top of male in
procreation, deciding whether to beget a child or not. She is a patriarchal male as well as tantric
female. She celebrates life; she is life, she is consciousness itself. Life looks like a man when in a
male body and a woman in a female body. Life itself is genderless. Like light creates light, life
creates life; Life is the light of lights. Hindus are called Bhaaratis, Bhaa=light, Rati=Love;
Bhaarati= lovers of light. Light of life is Goddess Lalitha. Her opposite, darkness of death is Kali.
Time is cycles of Light and darkness. Lalitha is time and its energies that change things. Let us
celebrate life.

Amritananda