USCP: The Guru Mantra and its content

aim hrīm śrīm / aim klīm sauḥ /
hamsaḥ śivaḥ sōham  / hskphrēm /
hasakṣamalavarayūm hsaum
sahakṣamalavarayīm sahauḥ


svarūpa nirūpaṇa hētavē svaguravē
Śrī Annapūrṇāmbā sahita
Śrī Amṛtānanda nātha
Śrī Guru Śrī pādukām pūjayāmi tarpayāmi namaḥ

We should separate the mantras from the explanatory statements. The portion in small print is an explanation which simply means:
I worship the feet of the Guru and his Shakti who taught me who I really am (meaning, that I am all that I see, not merely what I think is my body, mind or intellect).

1. Aim Hrim Srim. Aim is the channel for knowledge. So you are invoking the channel for knowledge for you to understand. For what purpose? Hrim, the nature of the limitation process, the individual life giver. To know the Srim, to receive the grace of God, so that you can merge back with God from which you came. You are experiencing separateness and limitedness and the pain of separateness and limitations. You want to experience the joy of union. That is the Srim. You want to gain knowledge to overcome this limitation process and get reabsorbed into the cosmic unity. So Aim Hrim Srim is a prayer which precedes every mantra in the Sri Chakra puja which means, Oh Goddess, Please give me knowledge to understand my limitations to overcome them and to experience my truth as You, the Goddess.

2. Aim Klim Souh. Knowledge and the grace of God manifest itself through the process of creation, the process of nouishment and action. In manifesting any thing, first it is as an idea in our thoughts. We dwell on it, enhance our knowledge, nourish the knowledge, couple it to material resources, act on it, to make the idea come alive. Then we let go of it. Aim=knowledge, Klim=nourishing and protecting the idea, and Souh=action, fulfilment and detachment.

3. Hamsah. Ha is the sound of the outgoing breath. Sah is the sound of the incoming breath. Hamsah or Soham are the mantras of life itself, the breath itself. Every living being breathes and this breathing process is called hamsah or soham. When you know this it becomes mantra. It is called ajapa gayatri. It is one of the forms of the gayatri. When you concentrate and focus your awareness on the breath hamsah then a certain knowledge dawns on you. And it is knowledge that separates the milk from the water. The legendary bird the Hamsah is supposed to have the power of separating the milk from the water. That means separating the truth from fiction. The fiction is that I am different from the world. The truth is that I am the world. When you realize that you are the world, and that any small thing happening anywhere does not and need not upset you, then this knowledge is what is given by the breath. The Guru Mantra is telling you that you must focus on your breath, hamsah to realise your truth as God.

4. The knowledge that you gain is Sivah Soham. I am Siva, the pure unbounded awareness, which is my true nature. That is the meaning of this part of Guru Mantra.

5. Hasakhaphrem. Ha is the symbol of Siva. The first breath that a person takes when born is the incoming breath. The last breath is the outgoing breath, which never returns. The first breath is the breath of the mother, and the last breath is the breath of the father. You are merging with the cosmos with the last breath. That is why we say that a person expires when he dies. You are not coming back again into this same body. So Ha is the symbol of death, of annilation, of Siva. Ha is called Visarga in Sanskrit. It means release of seed, to create life. Ha...aa..aa.. aa is also the symbol of the sound we make during an orgasm, when our life juice is going out of ourselves. Then we experience something like a death, a loss of eros, which is lust for life. Our connection to heaviness of earth reduces, we become light. Sa is the symbol of Shakti. Kha is the symbol of space. Phrem is the movement in space. As Siva and Shakti, as awareness and its modifications, we move in space. When the realization that I am Siva dawns on me I forget my body consciousness. I rise above my body consciousness and move freely in space as the union of awareness and its modifications, as Siva and Shakti. I experience a lightness, a levitating experience which is like flying in space. That infact is the death experience. Death is an orgasm.

6. To understand the next 2 phrases, Hasakshamalavarayum h-saum..... Sahaksamalavarayim s-hauh  - we need to know a little bit about what is called the Matrika Nyasa. Matrikas mean the garland of letters of Sanskrit alphabet. Nysa means placement in the body. In the matrika nyasa, the sixteen vowels are placed around the neck. The 12 consonants Ka to Tha around the chest, next 10 Da to Pha around waist, next 6 Ba to La around the genital, next 4 Va to Sa near the sacrum ( cervix), Ha, Ksha in the right and left eyes respectively. All the 50 letters have specific locations in the body; they may be called short addresses to refer to body parts.

The Sanskrit alphabets are located in different petals on the lotuses which are linked to the stem of your spinal chord. Next you have to understand where Ha is located, where Sa is located, where Ksa is located, where La is located, Va, Ra, and U are located. When you locate them all, you will discover a path traced by these seed letters. Hasakshamalavarayum and Sahaksamalavarayim are the two paths of light traced by locating where the letters are in your body. The Guru mantra teaches you how to move awareness in specific parts of your body to move Kundalini in the Ida and Pingala Nadis. This is the Mantra Yoga path to Kundalini. Hsaum and Shauh which you see here mean: Hsaum is formed by H and Sa and Aum. Shauh is formed by S and Ha and Auh. When Ha is the first letter, it means Siva nature dominantes, the male is in Yoga witholding the seed, not ejaculating it. Shakti however needs to draw the seed out of male Siva to give birth to a new life. That is Her purpose. She is the creatrix, the procreative power located in the vulva. She has to extract the seed and place it in her womb. When Shakti (Sa) is dominant, the first letter, She does extract the seed, and so aum becomes auh. ha=Visarga=creation. The creativity is the aum. Aum is holding the seed within. It is vibrating within as vitality but it is not being let out. When Siva in Yogic power is dominant the seed is contained within oneself. When Shakti is dominant She is asserting Her power to manifest, She extracts the seed orgasmically out of Him and places it in Her womb and proceeds with the creation. So Hsaum and Shouh are the male and female orgasms, holding the seed and ejaculating the seed. What we discussed so far is the invariant parts of the mantra. What remains is:

7.Svarupa nirupana hetave...... swarupayour true nature, nirupana to prove, hetave the cause. The purpose of this mantra is being defined here. The cause for proving to yourself your true nature,

8. Svagurave, - to your own guru who has initiated you, who is all important.You don't have to worry about anyone or any thing thing else.

9. Sri Annapurnamba sahita - is the shakti, the power behind the guru,

10. Amritananda Natha. - Mrityu means death. "A" is negation. Negation of death is Amrita. Therefore Amrita means nectar. Your Self is not born. How can it die? The amrita, nectar is aja unborn. Ananda means bliss, which is undying, unchanging. Bliss of nectar is Amritananda. Everyone of these gurus according to the Datta Sampradaya (lineage) are known as Nathas. There are nine Nathas. We follow that sampradaya. Natha literally means husband/wife, married to you, with whom you have to be intimate for your progress. More importantly the Guru is committed to take care of you (just like a husband/wife) as a soul mate. The real Guru, Goddess/God speaks through the Guru, who can be either female or male. Don't confuse the the Guru with a physical form. The Guru of everyone is one and the same. And that is God/Goddess. Guru appears to different people in different forms, but the form is only a symbol. You have to look behind the symbol to the truth and that truth is called Jagannatha. Jagat means world, Natha means husband/wife, the husband/wife of the manifested world. The Guru is referred to as the husband/wife here, so that you can open up your body, mind and soul without any inhibitions for deepest truths can be learned without inhibitions.

10. Sri Guru -  is the guru who is the source of all powers, Sri who is the wealth of the Lord is the Guru. In the Bhavana Upanishad it says,"The Guru confers the wealth of the Lord on you".

11. Sri padukam - the beneficial, auspicious lotus feet of the Guru which he has placed on the top of your head. You are not to think of the form of the Guru like this, but as Ardhanishwara which is half Siva, male, and half female, Shakti. In that form the right half is the male part and the left part is the female part. They are eternally united at all the chakra centers at the muladhara and all the way up. And out of their union, their eternal union, flows the bliss as the Ganga flows from the head of Siva. It overflows and falls down to Siva's feet where it becomes nectar flowing onto the top of your head. So it is that Guru who you must see.

12. pujayami - I worship that guru.

13. tarpayami -What is tarpanam? That which gives you satisfaction. What makes you say, "Yes, I have had enough, I don't need any more"? Having reached that state is called tarpanam. It means you must be able to make the guru feel totally satisfied, that you have rendered all that you are possible or capable of doing. You have given him the supreme happiness of whatever he desires, that is tarpanam. So I worship him (the Guru can be male or female), I adore the feet, I make the Lord and His power totally satisfied.

What is the desire of the God or the Goddess? They are both selffullfilled. What desires could they have? Although you are saying I am satisfying the Guru, what it really means is that you are satisfying yourself. It is you who are not having the fullfilled state. You are identifying with the Guru. It is you who are trying to reach the state of the Guru, the Lord and his infinite Power. You are trying to fulfill yourself. So pujayami means you are worshipping the Guru as your own manifestation outside and satisying her/him means satisfying yourself.

The meaning of the guru mantra tells you the purpose for which you are doing the puja, and what it is you want to understand, and what is the result gained by that (hamsah siva soham) and what the result is going to do for you hasaka phrem. And the path through the different chakras which you must take the kundalini and your awareness Then you adore the feet of the guru who has given you initiation.